Ian King

Coaching in the Fakebook era

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If you are a physical preparation coach (strength coach, S&C coach, Personal trainer – call it what you want) who is looking to start, build or advance your career, then you are going to have to make a decision. Do you prioritize creating a perception of your competence; or do you prioritize actual competence?

There are going to significant implications to the path you choose, that will affect you for better or worse, for life.

Some of the most common concerns and frustrations of physical preparation coaches include:

  • How do I get more clients?
  • How do I retain my clients?
  • How do I get a better quality of clients?
  • How do I get clients who respect me enough to turn up and pay me?
  • Will I be able to raise my income in the years to come?
  • Will I have an income in the years to come?

In the Information Age you have a choice, as evidenced by role models you have in the industry. You can create the perception of your competence (a more appropriate adjective would be your ‘greatness’) and create and raise income that way. Or you can development your competence. Which one do you do? Which one have you done? What is the difference?

These are some of the questions that will be addressed in this article.

The Information Age is described as beginning in 1989, however the social media internet age is a post-2000 phenomenon (e.g. Facebook commenced in 2004)

The ‘internet era’ has been associated with the rise of social media and opportunities to create a ‘fake’ perception of who you are. Is the creation a perception that is different than the reality deceptive? In my opinion, absolutely. However this article is not a moral debate. This is purely a discussion about the impact on your career, economically and otherwise.

Now this doesn’t mean that fake in the physical preparation industry began in 2000. My first major exposure to fake was in the late 1980s, when a North American coach regaled his Australian seminar audience with the way he strength trained Ben Johnson to becoming the fastest man in the world. Only problem was, for those who dug deep enough, according to Ben’s coach (the late Charlie Francis) the two had never met!

No, fake didn’t begin with the post-2000 Internet era. It just exploded then! Now anyone familiar with Internet dating sites and similar platforms to embellish on will tell you that faking it is common. Again, this is of no relevance to this article. What we are focused on is the impact on your career.

The fact that there is no shortage of faked ‘cyber-coaches’ is a reality today. The concern I have for you is that intentionally or otherwise, there is a risk you are going to copy or embrace these values. Is this a problem? I will give my answer to that question as the article unfolds.

The greatest example of Internet fake I witnessed was in at the start of the rise of the fakebook era. In the early 2000s a young entrant to the North American physical preparation industry was emailing me frequently with reference to themselves as an ‘up and coming strength coach’.

…I am a (hopefully) up and coming strength coach…

…It would help establish me as the hot up and coming coach that I am fast becoming…

I just didn’t understand what they meant. After all, they had very limited experience in training individual athletes, never been hired by a team, and could not attract an athlete. Put simply, he was struggling to find work, particularly in the area of athlete preparation, which was a goal of theirs.

I have read “So you want…” thoroughly. While I agree with your statements it is easier for you with an established record to attract new clients than it is for an “outsider” like me to break in. The reason I’m asking is to see where my weaknesses are – what is holding me back in other words as I’m failing to identify it somehow. I don’t think it is qualifications – I have a bundle…

…I’d like to move out of the personal training field and train athletes exclusively but bills need to be paid.

I was confused – he didn’t have many clients, none of whom to my knowledge were athletes, and by his own admission struggled to attract athlete clients. So how was he going to become a ‘hot’ strength coach? And how long would it take?

The answers appeared a few years later, with references in writing to his:

…stable of Olympic and national level athletes…

Now I was really confused, because he didn’t have the goods to attract real athletes. Then I got it. The new definition of a ‘strength coach’ was not like the old one, where you actually trained athletes. The post 2000 version of ‘strength coach’ was where you created the perception online that you trained athletes. No experience needed. At least not in training athletes. Some experience in marketing was very helpful. And a personal propensity for deceit.

Now the faking was not limited to this.[1]

Bottom line, there was not need to go through the decades of experience and thinking that created the content of these dozen or so original artifacts. The only competence required was the ability hit the Control C and Control V buttons (cut and paste). And of course possessing the personal traits to disregard professional courtesy, copyright laws, ethics, commitments etc.

So this is where the industry is. You don’t need experience if you are willing to fake it. But where does faking it take you?

There is two main types of marketing – conventional sales marketing, and referral based marketing.

Conventional marketing requires you to continuously create a new product or service, write sales copy, create databases, stay connected with your database, and blast to them frequently.

Referral based marketing involves you impacting your clients so much they are compelled to tell their family and friends, and as a result of the strength of their advocating you have more clients.

Which one is better? Let’s use the word different, rather than better. The marketing based approach require continual marketing. Lets take the typical e-book of the post 2000 era. It ran out of pulling power pretty quickly, typically because it was rubbish content slapped together and marketed beyond its value. Ever counted the number of e-commerce products some of the more prolific marketers in our industry have created? Some of them, if stacked up, would exceed the height of your ceiling.

The advantage of sales based marketing, especially of products, is the potential for leverage. The disadvantage is that even if your initial sales are great, they will decline very quickly over time, and you need to keep marketing. And you need to continually adapt to the marketing platforms, and how to compete in new marketing spaces.

Referral based marketing is driven out of high competence. You pay nothing for marketing, you do no marketing, and you attract an endless supply of clients. Now it may not be as leveraged as selling a product, but you don’t have to keep reinventing yourself in marketing, and no-one can take competence away from you. You have it for life.

Now we need to make one more distinction. We have talked about marketing and the challenge of having to always market yourself and new products, learning new platforms in new marketing environments. But we need to categorize between marketing with honesty, and deceit based marketing.

Deceit based marketing is where knowingly mislead your market. For example in the case study above, this ‘ambitious’ yet inexperienced ‘coach’ was asked in seminar (recorded and sold in DVD) where the attendee could learn more about the (very familiar!) bodyweight exercises they had just been taught in that 2003 Las Vegas seminar. To which they chose to respond:

Q. …[from the audience] Where can I find all these exercises?

A Only through personal contact [with me]. Firstly, write them all down, and then you have some. And second of all, it is in the ‘Martial Arts’ book…..

Now they could have been honest and listed any of the dozen or so resources they had learnt these unique bodyweight exercises from.[2] However perhaps the attraction of the ability to create the perception of competence won over. Perhaps the post-2000 era culture was reflected?

So what are the implications of deceit based marketing?

Firstly, internet or no-internet, a person’s reputation is still a currency of value.

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently. —Warren Buffett[3]

Not only are you going to need to reinvent new products and new marketing material and delivery methods, you are going to need to re-invent your reputation – if you can.

There have been two significant economic phenomenons in the last two decades that speak volumes to the risks of selling perception.

Firstly, the dotcom bubble bursting early 2000s. Many of these earlier technology companies had share values was in excess of their tangible values, and this discrepancy contributed to a market crash.

The second was the Sub-Prime loan crisis in the US between about 2006 and 2008. There were too many financial instruments of no value being sold as if they had value, and this crashed the housing market in the US, threatened the entire US economy, and many other economies around the world.

Did some people make money initially from selling perception in both these examples? Absolutely! Did it end well? Not at all.

Personally, I would not recommend this path. I have seen the short-term benefits for some, however the medium long-term consequences await. For those who believe in any form of universal laws, these consequences are unavoidable and inevitable.

So if you choose this path, the focus on prioritizing the perception of your competence, you have been forewarned. The risk is yours. If you are following this path without really realizing it – and this would be easy to do considering the spotlight shone on the ‘success’ of many other fakebook like ‘hero’s’ in this industry, it may be time to pause and reflect.

By now my preference for developing competence may be clear. This does not mean I discourage marketing. You just don’t need to do it to achieve the first $250,000 per year.

I provide my definition of competence.

Competence is measured by your ability to earn a six figure annual service income through attracting, retaining an endless demand from referral based business with A-class clients, paying your triple figures per hour, clients happy to work with you as you travel the globe on holiday for around three months of the year or so. And to do so in the absence of any marketing, or any symbiotic relationship or association with a magazine, commercial company, gymnasium, school, or sporting team or organisation.–Ian King

Now the only criticism of this form of income I accept is that it is not leveraged. The solution is when you are charging three figures per hour, you only need to do up to 20 hours a week of billable hours for your first $100,000. Leaving many hours in the week to more leveraged income streams. Or when you are able to charge $200/hr, do only 10-15 hours a week for the first $100,000-$150,000 per annum. Beats the hell out of waiting for you to make your fortune out of your electronic products, or wondering why you are working for nothing to pay the trainers in your personal training studio.

Is this a pipe dream or ‘deceit-based’ marketing? No, this is what graduates of our KSI Coaching Program do and receive. It’s real. It’s what we teach.

The challenge is first embracing this possibility. If you think it’s too good to be true, move on. If you don’t like the idea of having this sort of income and being relatively unknown, instead attracted to the perception of being ‘famous’ and ‘popular’ in your industry – move on.

And if the thought of starting at Level 1, akin to donning the white belt in a new martial art discipline, is beyond the scope of your ego, move on.

However, if you are attracted to developing competence to the level that results in living the life as described in my definition of competence, keep reading. If you believe you can achieve this level of competence without our help, we say good on you and can we watch and study your progress. And for those who are attracted to our guidance in achieving this definition of competence – get started here. https://kingsports.net/courses/

Life is full of choices!

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[1] This coach took the ‘How to Write’ and ‘Get Buffed!™ books and produced a knock off claimed to be a ‘bible’. They took the contents of the ‘Foundations of Physical Preparation’ book and liberally sprinkled it through a series of e-books about martial arts, the contents of a strength training program for an Asian team sport and turned it into an e-book about macro-cycles; and liberally sprinkled them all between a series of books and e-books about after-burning, warping speed, shape-shifting, new rules and female body shaping etc etc. Then there were the articles…

[2] Some of the sources the presenter could have shared when questioned:

Twelve Weeks of Pain, King, I., 1999, T-mag.com

Strength Specialization Series (video/dvd) (1998)

How to Write Strength Training Programs (book), 1998

Get Buffed! I (book), 1999

How To Teach Strength Training Exercises (book), 2000

How to Teach Strength Training Exercises (DVD), 2000

Get Buffed! II (book), 2002

Ian King’s Guide to Control Drills, 2002

And other places….

[3] https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/reputation

Ian King

A financial reality check for physical preparation coaches

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Irrespective of the motivations that drew you into this industry, there’s a probability that at some point in time you are going to reflect upon the low incomes that constitute most roles in this industry. Put simply this is one of the lower paying ‘professions’. Not totally surprising considering one of the more popular roles within the industry, that of a personal trainer, is the current go to for anyone who is not sure what they want to do with their life, or a waiting for a break in another industry.

Physical preparation coaches who work as gym instructors[1] or personal trainers[2] typically earn below the poverty levels, between $20,000 to $40,000 per year. Physical preparation coaches working with athletes as ‘strength and conditioning coaches’ typically earn $30,000 to $50,000 per year[3] at the college level. Some can earn $75,000 to $150,000 a year in the professional sports ranks.[4] A few earn higher.

Where does this place the physical preparation profession relative to the rest of the work force in developed countries such as America, Europe and Australia? Here’s a statistic from the United States.

Based on the Internal Revenue Service’s 2010-2014 database below, here’s how much the top Americans make: [5]

Top 1%: $380,354

Top 5%: $159,619

Top 10%: $113,799

Top 25%: $67,280

Top 50%: >$33,048

If we were to make a median income in physical preparation, I believe it would be below $33,000 US/year. In other words, the majority of physical preparation coaches are in the bottom 50% of income earners.

For those who plan to make a life long career, and in particular for those who plan to or do support a family, there’s a real challenge with income.

I have sensed a belief or perception with physical preparation that being a physical preparation coach means you need to forgo financial success, because we are little more than a community service. Granted the recent history of this industry has been volunteer-based, but those days are gone.

You don’t have to remain poor because you chose to be involved in physical preparation as a coach![6]

Yes, the average incomes within the industry are a factor dragging the sector. However another factor holding back incomes in this industry is the lack of financial education.

Based on the responses I have received from physical preparation coaches (personal trainers, strength coaches, strength and conditioning coaches etc.) to a ‘financial health’ questionnaire I have developed it really clear that some clarification would benefit those in the industry.

I appreciate that it all comes back to definitions and it’s not appropriate to use the right and wrong approach to how a person defines themself, what they do or what they have. So I will provide the definitions I subscribe to in each point. I also appreciate the sensitive nature of money and the ego, so I am going to be as gentle as I can.

Here are at seven things about your financial position that I believe deserve ‘attention’

1.  You don’t own a business!

One of the questions in the survey where the answers really shocked me were how many physical preparation respondents ticked yes, they have business. Now from where I sit I am going to assume they are self-employed, and or have a trading name or entity, and that gives them the belief they have a business. (Yes, I appreciate that the small minority actually do own a business, and we will touch upon that shortly)

I thought like that once. Until I was exposed to some simple but powerful concepts that helped me understand that being self-employed is not being a business owner.

Firstly lets look at it from the perspective of Robert Kiyoski’s cashflow quadrant. On the left hand side of the quadrant you find the employee (E) and self-employed (SE). What they have in common is they both sell their time. On the right hand side of the quadrant you the business owner (B) and the investor (L). What they have in common is they have leverage. The business owner typically leverages off other peoples time (OPT) (e.g. services) and or the sale of products, and the investor typically leverages off money, including other peoples money (OPM). I will discuss what ‘leverage’ is shortly.

Now before you talk yourself into the possibility that what you do places you on the right hand side of the quadrant not the left, I want to introduce a second perspective on the definition of ‘business’, one I learnt from Brad Sugars.

A business is a commercial, profitable enterprise that works without you.—Brad Sugars

The key word is without you. You are not at work and you are making money. You can potentially receive income whilst you sleep from efforts other than your own (ironically another question in the financial survey where the typical answers give were the catalyst for this article!) . And yes, I understand some of you ‘have trainers’ and believe this describes you – give me time, I will address that.

So unfortunately, based on the definitions I rely upon, you don’t have a business!

2.  You don’t have leverage

Leverage is typically used to describe the phenomenon of achieving a greater result than the effort put in. When used to describe income, leverage is one of three types of income – earned, leveraged and passive.

Earned income occurs when you sell your time for money. If you don’t work, you don’t get paid, and once you have done the hour and been paid, there is no more money for that effort. This is what the majority of physical preparation coaches do. They don’t have leverage.

Their income is limited to the hours they can work, and is non-existent if they don’t or can’t work or if the client does a no-show.

Leveraged income can be defined as doing something once and getting paid for it over and over again. Minorities within the industry have leveraged income and the methods typically used to achieve leverage warrant further discussion. Suffice to say, how many physical preparation coaches do you know retired early and living permanently on the beach in Hawaii or similar because of their success in leveraged income?

Bottom line – without leverage, your ability to substantially increase your income is very limited, and your ability to have time freedom nearly non-existent.

Leverage is the reason some people become rich and others do not become rich.–Robert Kiyosaki

3. Your income does not rise faster than the rate of inflation

One of the biggest financial challenges we all face is the impact of inflation or rising cost of living on the value of our dollar. Is your income rising faster than the rate of inflation.

This is tougher for the relatively younger person in the workforce to answer as they have not been around long enough to assess the tradeoff between the increase in cost of living and increases in their earnings. More experienced physical preparation coaches are in a far better position to comment on this.

Now keep in mind we are not talking about the changes that will occur in the demands on your income if you are supporting another per

son/persons, as is the case if you were to start/or have a family.

The chart provided shows the cost of living rises in the US since 1997 – almost 30%. So what was the change in minimum wage in that time? 0%.[7] The table below that goes back to 1990. [8]

You can do your own sums on this – do you have more or less disposable income than you had 5, 10, 20 or 30 years ago? Which raises the next question for you – do your current income streams have the ability to increase your income at a rate that exceeds the rate of rise in cost of living? I suggest it does not and will not – unless of course you change.

4. You don’t have sufficient retirement savings

If you stopped work today, by circumstances or choice, could you support yourself financially for another few decades at a standard of living you would be happy with. Here are some 2016 stats relative to the US on retirement:[9]

  • One-third of Americans report they have no retirement savings.
  • 23% have less than $10,000 saved.
  • This means that 56% of Americans have less than $10,000 saved for retirement!

If you calculate a very, very basic cost of living for a single person at say $25,000 per year, and expected to live an average of twenty years in retirement, you are going to need at least $500,000 in savings, placing you in the top 13% of all Americans regarding their retirement savings currently.

If you were spending the savings you could survive at that standard of living for 20 years (not withstanding any extra medical costs – which are going to be inevitable if you live to the full term of your natural life); or you could hope to invest your 500k in an interest-bearing instrument producing 25k a year.

How many years could you support yourself in retirement on your current savings or investments?

How many years could you support yourself in retirement on your current savings or investments?

 5.  You are not immune to being replaced by a robot

Another answer to a question in my financial health questionnaire related to a person’s confidence that their income was future proofed, devoid from threat of being made redundant by robots (or other technology) or shifts in global trends such as certain labor going ‘off-shore’.

Some believe that they were immune to this. Let’s talk about technology first. If your decision making in your service is limited i.e. no high level discernment or creativity is involved, you are very replaceable by technology.

I am going to be perhaps hurtfully blunt – what most physical preparation coaches do is lacking in the high level thinking that would prevent a robot from taking their place. The only real attraction for most clients is that you are a person with a heartbeat not a robot. However that will not save any profession at risk of being replaced by robots.

6.  You’re not unique

Your lack of uniqueness means a number of things. Firstly a robot can replace you. Secondly you are just like everyone else, leaving you wondering why you can’t get standout demand for your services.

The challenge for many is to understand the concept of UMP – unique marketing position (or USP, Unique Selling Position). Dying your hair or wearing dreadlocks or flashing your guns does not make you unique in the sense of UMP. Nor does a twist in your marketing.

The kind of uniqueness I suggest pays is most effective in the physical preparation industry (in fact in most of not all service industries) is your level of competence and subsequent ability to make a massive difference in people’s lives.

This I suggest comes from the higher levels of competence, you with a focus on being the best you can be. Not being like or liked by everyone else.

Here’s the irony – most prioritize being liked by others, and to do this you need to be ‘like’ others. How do you expect to get a superior outcome if you train people like everyone else does?

My reality is that competence threatens. As my coaches progress through and up the levels of competence, their former work colleagues will turn on them. They are typically ejected from their workplace, some with the use of police called in by their previous colleagues. Certain things happen when your competence gets to a certain level. I celebrate them as signs of greatness!

When you stop being like other people, other people will stop liking you!–Darren Hardy

If you haven’t been kicked out of your former working environment, you haven’t raised your competence level to the extent that you could!

7.  You’re not an entrepreneur

Put simply and generically, you are not an entrepreneur. The most poignant use of the word ‘entrepreneur’ that I have seen in my four decade career in this industry was a young man who had recently left the security of his employment in a non-related industry to take up his long held dream of being a full time self-employed physical preparation coach.   Shortly after that live move he was diagnosed with cancer. In his online fund raising page he talked about how his life collapsed upon his diagnosis, and his lack of income and medical insurance was because he had chosen to become ‘an entrepreneur’.

No he had not become an entrepreneur. Rather, he had simply moved from the E quadrant to the S quadrant. Not that I felt it was responsible to share that with him at that time. At that, as I do with many life-impacting conclusions I reach, committed to in the future helping physical preparation coaches be forewarned and educated, before they were put in these serious situations.

Sorry, but you are not an entrepreneur.

Conclusion

As I said at the start money is a tender topic intertwined with pride and ego. I have sought to be respectable and gentle yet at the same time straight with you. Yes, I have made generalizations. Yes, I may have upset a few. All of this is worthwhile if I have helped a few reflect upon any misguided conclusions they may have reached about their financial future.

To help you I have developed a short course providing vital much-needed entrepreneurial education. The next program starts at the beginning of next month. If you are interested, email us at question@kingsports.net.

This industry is already one of the lower earning industries in the developed world.   Continuing to operate in an environment devoid of financial education is not helping. If you truly want to become more entrepreneurial and are willing to empty your cup (figuratively speaking) this course presents a great starting point!

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[1] http://www.fitnesscareers.com.au/newsview/fitness-salary-guide-38

[2] http://www.fitnesscareers.com.au/newsview/fitness-salary-guide-38

[3] by Rick Suttle, Demand Media, http://work.chron.com/much-strength-conditioning-coaches-make-average-19363.html

[4] Careers in Sport, Fitness, and Exercise, By American Kinesiology Association, Human Kinetics         http://www.humankinetics.com/excerpts/excerpts/strength-and-conditioning-coach

[5] http://www.financialsamurai.com/how-much-money-do-the-top-income-earners-make-percent/

[6] King, I, 2005, The Way of the Physical Preparation Coach, p. 165

[7] https://buffalogrumblings.wordpress.com/tag/minimum-wage/

[8] https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/05/speedup-americans-working-harder-charts/

[9] Kirkham, E., 2016. 1 in 3 Americans have saved $0 for retirement, Gobankingrates, 14 March 2016, http://time.com/money/4258451/retirement-savings-survey/

Ian King

Technology and training

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On Dec 3 2017 it was 25 years to the day since the first text message (SMS) was successfully sent. [1] [2] The message required a computer. They could be received on a hand set mobile phone, but could not be responded to.

Twenty five years ago athletes – pro and amateur – were trained on programs that were not individualized, using crude assumptions that what they were doing would make them better, and because they for the most part typically didn’t start the strength training seriously until they were in their late teens or early twenties, the injuries that occurred towards the end of the first decade of strength training were masked by ‘retirement age’.

Twenty-five years later, post 2017, technology is moving to messaging apps such as Facebook, whatsApp, etc. Texting continues, with 800 million a month in Australia on the Vodafone network alone. [3]

Twenty-five years later, post 2017, athletes – pro and amateur – are trained on programs that….are not individualized, using crude assumptions that what they were doing would make them better.

Nothings changed? Yes, there is a change! The starting age for athletes commencing serious strength training has dropped by a decade, which means that the typical injuries caused by strength training that appear within the first decade are appearing a decade before ‘retirement’ age – and are therefore no longer masked.

And this is a problem. Not so much for the coaches with a big talent pool, because there will be someone to take the place. But for the individual athletes, whose hopes and dreams are crushed – when this situation was both predictable and preventable….

Oh, I forgot to mention – if you are really lucky, your coach might change the name on top of your program sheet!

Does this absence of masking of injuries by retirement cause any changes in the way humans act or respond? Apparently not.

There are a few additional technological impacts on physical training.

Firstly, the surgery techniques to repair damaged connective tissue has really advanced, in that the surgeries are less invasive, and the healing time is shorter. Does this mean that surgery no longer comes with further collateral damage? I suggest not.

Secondly, technological advances in measuring training. GPS units to track movement patterns, forces platforms to measure power output, timing gates for displacement speeds etc.

And thirdly advancements in equipment, positively impacting performance.

But what about program design? Is that important? Obviously not important enough for the masses to expect advancement in the ability of ‘professionals’ to provide individualization in program design, because in this regard nothings changed.

Oh, and there is one more change worth noting – the increase in incidence and severity of injuries appears to be constantly rising…..

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[1] https://news.sky.com/story/first-text-message-sender-neil-papworth-celebrates-25th-sms-anniversary-11154491

[2] http://metro.co.uk/2017/12/03/worlds-first-text-message-sent-25-years-ago-today-7127957/

[3] https://www.vodafone.com.au/red-wire/text-message-25-years

Ian King

If only they knew….

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….what has been in print for over 20 years…

The sport specific technique session was coming to a close when I heard my fellow coach refer to a prior knee injury in one of the athlete.   Let’s call that athlete Billy.

Intrigued, at the conclusion of the session I asked the young athlete:

IK: What was the knee injury?

Billy: I had meniscus surgery on my left knee.

IK: Let me ask, were you doing off-field training at that time? Strength and conditioning?

Billy: Yes.

IK: Mmmm…And what age were you when this happened?

Billy: 15.

IK: Mmmm….

So I decided to provide some general guidance in the hope of helping to reduce the damage that was already done.

IK: So you need to keep away from strength training.

Now I know what you are thinking – Ian, does that mean you have changed your mind, that strength training is no longer important and relevant to sport. No, that’s not the case. But what I have got to realize from four decades of professional observation is that what most athletes are doing is damaging and most would be better off doing nothing. Especially those whose positions really don’t require high levels of size and strength, and especially those with prior joint injuries where (in my opinion) the injuries were caused or contributed to be the flawed off-field training).

Billy: Oh. I am doing a fair bit of strength training now.

IK: How much?

Billy: 4 days a week.

IK: Mmmm…Okay the next step would be to minimize your exposure to quad dominant exercises.

In the 1980s I saw first hand the phenomenon that physical therapists were calling ‘quad dominance’, and spend the next decade creating and refining a systems to categorize exercise, to help myself and any others who wanted to use the concept to avoid the damage caused by quad dominance. I called this concept ‘Lines of Movement’. [1]

So we’ve got many ‘professionals’ who can talk the talk – can word drop terms like ‘quad dominant’ and ‘posterior chain’ [2] – but have got no clue how, why or where it should be applied.

IK: You know, squats, lunges etc.

The look on Billy’s face told me all I needed to know.

IK: Okay, where did you get your program from.

The answer confirmed my fears.

IK: Let me see if I can help you. Show me the program and I will tell you the changes to make.

Billy showed me the program. Two days out of four were leg days. Nothing unusual there. And five out of the seven (5/7) exercises in each of those days were…..quad dominant exercises. The usual suspects – squats, lunges, step ups etc.

The boy was dead man walking. He had a challenged future in sport by virtue of what he was led to believe was ‘the right thing’ in his off-field training.

The only exception to this rule is those athletes with genetically gifted with load tolerant connective tissue.The kind that rise to the top in say US pro sport, from a base of millions. The eastern European philosophy – throw a lot of eggs at the wall, the ones that don’t crack – they will be the champions.

IK: Billy, there is possibly that for now you should do NO quad dominant exercise, at least for a few months.   The goal is to ideally reverse the imbalance the quad dominance you have created from years of imbalanced strength programs. Now you can move to a ratio of say 3:1 hip dominant to quad, etc. etc.7

Billy: What are some hip dominant exercises?

IK: Deadlifts, deadlift variations, Olympic lifts, Olympic lift variations etc etc. Single leg exercises where the trunk stays over (not that windmill bastardization of my single leg stiff legged deadlift though!

And then I left Billy to ponder the gap between what he had been led to believe was going to make him a better sports person, and those challenging thoughts provided by Coach King!

It’s always tough to walk away from an athlete left possibly to drown from incompetent advice. However I do my best to provide athlete and coach education. The challenge is the swell or rubbish education, at both professional, academic, and lay person level rises faster…..

Ah, the pro’s and con’s of the information age….

If only they athletes knew what damage they were doing to themselves in the way they trust those so-called experts and those in positions of authority.

——

[1] Now despite (or because) this concept has been published more times by others in the absence of any connection to the source than by myself, one would have expected the message would have sunk in. But it hasn’t. Probably because those who published it didn’t really appreciate, value and understand the concept in the first place.

[2] Not the original title ‘Lines of movement’, because this was about the only thing the plagiarist’s changed!

Ian King

A message to parents of young athletes – would you sign up for this?

/by

Imagine this. You are turning up to training 45 minutes earlier than the previous generation did. You are doing ‘dryland’ – alleged performance enhancing and injury reducing physical training. And it is degrading your body shape, increasing the severity and frequency of your injuries, and putting you out of sport, play and movement earlier than if you didn’t do it. And the performance enhancing impacts are unclear at best.

Would you sign up for this?

I would expect not. Then why are you signing your kid up for this?

I know, you don’t know any better. You trust your sports coaches, your school. You don’t know me. What I am saying it a ‘bit left field’. You don’t like what I say etc. etc.

Ignore me at your child’s peril……

I watched 10-14 year olds perform 45 minutes of dry land training before their multi-week swimming training session.

What physical risks does swimming present? Rounded and injuries shoulders, arched and sore backs. Both resulting in performance reduction.

So what will this 45 minute dry land session do to them?

I outline my thoughts below – not holding back, but at the same time not sensationalizing the matter. This is serious, and your kids are in the cross hairs.

I write this for parents of young athletes, or athletes of any age who seek to improve their understanding of optimal athlete performance programs.

I rely on concepts and analytical techniques I published from 1998 onwards in publications such as ‘How to Write Strength Training Programs’ (1998, book), ‘How to Teach Strength Training Programs’ (2000, book) – both of which are available to anyone; and DVD programs such as ‘Strength Specialization Series’ (1998, DVD) and ‘Injury Prevention & Rehabilitation Series’ (2000, DVD) – which are only available to coaches in our coach education program.

If I reduce one injury in one athlete, prevent one athlete from having surgery, extend the career of one athlete, give better quality of later life to one former athlete – my efforts are worthwhile.

Yes part of all of this message will upset, anger, offend etc. some coach or coaches somewhere – but your child is worth more than the feelings of a coach or coaches that should have made a greater effort to be better.

So let’s dive deeper into the dry land program we are using in this real world case study.

STRENGTH VS FLEXIBILITY

Let’s start with simple breakdown of time. It was 40 minutes of strength exercises, followed by 5 minutes of stretching.

If your aim was to accelerate the shortening that swimming causes to the muscle, you would be advised to do just this. 40 minutes of tissue tensioning and shortening work, and 5 minutes of tissue lengthening.

If your goal was to reduce injury and enhance performance and length their careers – you would reverse this. 40 minutes of stretching, and 5 minutes of strengthening.

Now lets talk about sequence. Strength first, flex second. If you flex first apparently, according to rumor and sketchy science, it will make you weak. So the current trend in a world that refuses to think for itself is to do it last.

Now in the real world, if you had the courage to defy conformity, and did stretching first, you would find the stretching open up your joints, free the nerves to fire, reduce the joint wear and tear. The only way to do it! But that’s just my opinion, based on near 40 years of coaching and the experience of training more athletes in one lifetime than you could imagine.

However unless you control the program, don’t hold your breath waiting for this change. Your child will be having shoulder surgery before that happens, as the dominant world trends – the reason why humans do anything including their sports training – are going the other way at them moment. Stretching is bad. Just about the only time you are going to hear your child needs to stretch is after the injury has occurred, from your physical therapist. A little too late….

UPPER BODY VS LOWER BODY VS TRUNK (Core)

If you divide the body simplistically into three sections – upper body, lower body and middle of the body (core) where should the dry land focus go?

Based on how I saw the exercises being conducted, and taking into account my interpretation of the prime mover, I observed that…

…about 12.5% of the exercises go to trunk (abdominal or core as some like to say), and these were done as the last few exercises. The trunk/core/abdominal was given by far the least focus.

….about 25% of the exercises go to upper body and these were for the most part down in the latter half of the strength session.

….about 50% of the exercises go to lower body, and these were done for the mo part in the first half of the strength session. So the lower body was given the most priority.

Now I don’t expect to dwell on the discussion of relative importance of each of these three sections of the body to swimming performance – that would take a bit more time and space, and we can get into that another time.

However I will speak without hesitation to injury prevention (or in this case, as in most cases injury creation). I suggest the neglect of the middle of the body completely unacceptable.

ABDOMINAL BALANCE

Based on the ‘Lines of Movement’ concept I first published in 1998 and now universally adopted (although rarely referenced) I identify four (4) basic lines of movement in the abdominals that generally speaking provide balance in training along with two additional, more advanced ones.

Now there were more exercises in the w0rkout that included abdominal involvement (e.g. med ball throw downs), however when they are not the primary focus, they are listed as abdominal exercises. And when they involve other muscles such as ‘planks’, they get categorized as integrated.

Essentially not only is the abdominal program under prioritizing this muscle group, what is done potentially lacks balance.

Opportunities I found Reality of this program
BASIC
1. Hip flexion

Ö
2. Trunk flexion

Ö

Ö
3. Rotation

Ö
4. Lateral Flexion

Ö
ADVANCED
5. Co-contraction glut/ab

Ö
6.   Integrated

Ö

Ö

UPPER BODY BALANCE

Based again on my ‘Lines of Movement’ concept I divided the eight (8) upper body exercises into the following lines.

Horizontal pull – 4.5

Vertical Pull – 2.5

Horizonal Pull – 1

Vertical push – 0

The part numbers came from giving a movement that shared dominance in lines of movement 0.5 points to each of the two dominant lines of movement/muscle groups.

This translates into the following table.

Percentage of lines of movement based on number of exercsies.

My recommended exercise distribution of using 8 exercises Reality of this program
Horizontal pull

50 %

15%
Vertical push

25 %

0%
Vertical pull

12.5%

30%
Horizontal push

12.5%

55%

What is the main form of upper body imbalance from most swimming strokes? Rounded and drooped shoulders. What causes this? The reliance of the majority of swimming strokes on the chest (horizontal push) and lats (vertical pull) to pull the body through the water.

What does this program do? Makes the imbalances even worse, faster. You can expect a hastened decline in posture, more injuries, more severe injuries, more surgery and a shorter career, followed by a life time of rounded shoulder…

But it doesn’t have to be this way….

And this is without getting into a discussion of relative sequence of exercises, and relative loading potential of exercises selected, the results of which would only painter a gloomier picture.

LOWER BODY BALANCE

The potentially least important muscle group (yes, it is important, and it will be dependent on stroke, style, individual swimmer) that got the most attention in this dry land training program example has it’s own imbalances.

There were a total of thirteen (13) lower body exercises, however leg swings were three of them and I have taken them out of the equation for the moment.

Based again on my ‘Lines of Movement’ concept I divided the remaining ten (10) lower body exercises into the following lines.

Hip dominant – 2

Quad dominate – 8

This translates into the following table.

Percentage of lines of movement based on number of exercises.

My generalized recommended exercise distribution using 10 exercises Reality of this program
Hip dominant

60 % (6)

20 % (2)
Quad dominant

40 % (4)

80 % (8)

What is the main form of lower body imbalance from most swimming strokes? The muscle imbalances of the lower body in a swimmer are less than the upper body challenges they face. However sore lower backs are, in my professional opinion, caused by over-used quad muscles pulling on the hips and causing the nerves of the spine to be pinched.

Now swimming in itself does not cause a large number of lower back injuries compared to upper body injury potential. However, if you were to do this kind of dry land program chronically, you would quickly find yourself facing a higher incidence of back pain and lower extremity soft tissue aggravations than you would from normal swimming alone.

Quad dominance caused physical ailments are common in many land based running sports. Now swimming is neither land based or impact, so why would you want to reproduce a potential side effect in a sport that otherwise sees relatively little of it?

And this is without getting into a discussion of relative sequence of exercises, and relative loading potential of exercises selected, the results of which would only painter a gloomier picture.

For example I teach that prioritization of the training effect is caused by three main factors – which exercise/s are done most (relative volume), which exercise are done first or in what order (sequence), and what are the relative loading potential of each exercises (if an exercise can do load, it has the potential to create greater change in the muscle. If not matched by the opposite muscle group exercise, imbalances can result).

Take relative loading potential. All the quad dominant exercises involve the squat or squat variations – the load potential and real load lifted (even if only bodyweight) is far in excess of the load potential of the two hip dominant exercises – which only involved part of the bodyweight, and by nature of the less number of joints involved, could never match the load potential of the squat exercise.

In other words if I painted the full picture, it would get even uglier….

But it doesn’t have to be this way….

SUMMARY

Sport has the potential to create many positive outcomes. What is often overlooked is the potential for sport to also create shape in the body for better or worse, long term. Mostly for the worse. The longer you play, the higher level you play, the greater the chance you take the physical downsides into the rest of your life. It doesn’t take too long or too many training sessions to commence the shaping.

We accept that about sports. It comes with it’s good and bad. However what if what we are doing in our ‘dry land’ or ‘physical preparation’ was making the physical downside worse?

In the 1990s I suggested that most physical training in sport was doing more damage than good.

In fact I believe that most injuries are actually caused by the way athletes train. The only injury acceptable is an unavoidable impact injury.   Virtually all soft tissue injuries are avoidable. But imagine that – training, during which focus is geared towards performance enhancement, may induce most injuries. Isn’t this ridiculous! [1]

In fact from my experiences and observation, the greatest effect that I have seen from most physical preparation is to detract from these five factors, not enhance it. Imagine that – training and being worse off for it. Well how do you think the athlete would feel if he/she found out! Yeah, they’re real fit – to sit in the stands in their team uniform and watch![2]

If it was introduced at about 20 years of age, and most athletes retire from competitive sport in their late twenties, the physical damage and the aging factor combined and were hidden.

But what if the training methods now, some two decades later, are just as damaging to the body as they were in the 1990s? What if they were done to kids? The kid would potentially be damaged to the point where a decade later, n their teams, they were too damaged physically to continue to play, or to continue to improve.

And in my observation, that is exactly what is happening.

When assessing the injury potential of your decisions in training today, one must look forward many years. Because few physical preparation coaches train individuals for many years continuously, they do not have the opportunity to understand the long-term implications of the training program they are implementing with the individual athlete. As a result, from my observations, most physical preparation programs do more harm than good. They may give short term results or confidence to the athlete, but result in significant performance restrictions and or injuries long term.

The more an athlete participates in physical preparation, including the younger they start in physical preparation, the greater the incidence and severity of injury. Unfortunately these injuries are being blamed away by many involved in sport as being a function of the increased demands and impact forces in ‘modern day’ sport. This to me is little more than an excuse, an exercise in putting one’s head in the proverbial sand. Quite simply, the majority of training programs are flawed from a physical preparation perspective and are causing the increased injuries. [3]

In my opinion, I repeat my comment of 20 years ago – most training does more harm than good. The only thing that has changed is now we are doing the damage to younger and younger athletes.

The below summarizes in table format how far apart my approach to what is being done by the majority.

A comparison of my generalized recommendations vs. the observed training session.

My recommendations Reality of this program
Sequence of dry land Flex then strength Strength then flex
Time allocation Flex–30m/Strength–15m Strength–40m/Flex–5m
Prioritisation of body part Middle-upper-lower Lower-upper-middle
Number of abdominal lines of movement

4-6

2
Prioritization of upper body lines of movement 1.     Horizontal pull

2.     Vertical push

3.     Vertical pull

4.     Horizontal push

 1.     Horizontal push

2.     Vertical pull

3.     Horizontal pull

4.     Vertical push
Prioritization of upper body lines of movement 1.     Hip dominant

2.     Quad dominant

 1.     Quad dominant

2.     Hip dominant

In summary, what I observed being done these young athletes and what I believe should be done is almost diametrically opposed. It would be difficult to reach more opposite conclusions. Interpretation aside, one of us is really off-track.

Question I have include – who writes these programs? What is their experience? Will they ever be held accountable for the long term impacts? Why are we doing this to our children?  Will you keep throwing your child into the ‘lion’s den’?

I was of the understanding we were to care and nurture our children, not accelerate and amplify the damage of sport….

[1] King, I., 1997, Winning & Losing, Ch 5, p. 25

[2] King, I., 1999, So you want to become a physical preparation coach, p. 30-31

[3] King, I., 2005, The way of the physical preparation coach, p. 66-67

Ian King

Stop lifting your leg!

/by

The former US NCAA Division 1 athlete started performing the exercise in their program, the single leg stiff leg deadlift, for the first time under my supervision.

As they bent forward their non-support leg began to lift backwards. I asked:

‘Why are you lifting your leg?’

They replied:

‘Because that is how I was taught to do it.’

I found this really ironic, as the exercise I originated the exercise from Australia, and now I had to correct it from American influence. I published this exercise in the from the late 1990s onwards [i] [ii] [iii] [iv] [v] [vi] [vii] [viii] [ix] [x] after a decade or so of testing.

I found it ironic but not surprising, as for nearly two decades now I have watched the bastardization of my innovation. I spend the most of the first decade post 2000 wondering how this ‘variation’ came about. How did my exercise end up being messed up so badly? Then I stumbled on the answer.

It was published in Men’s Health in 2000[xi], unreferenced and un-credited, by another ‘author’.

At the photo shoot I suspect the male model made up his own interpretation.

I understand how most photos shoots happen. The ‘author’ is rarely if ever on site. An unknown organizes the photo shoot, and the result in this case was an exercise where the subject lifted their back leg.

So the reason why the world now does this exercise with the back leg moving backwards is – because they are copying a misinterpretation done by a Men’s Health male model in a photo shoot!

A good enough reason? I don’t believe so….

Reminds me of the story about a trend in marathon runner. The story goes that Australia’s lead marathon runner in the 1982 Commonwealth Games was suffering from diarrhea as they ran. The solution they chose to reduce the embarrassment was to wipe their legs down with the face wipe cloths offered at regular intervals in the break. From watching this act, a new trend was developed – wipe your legs down with the wet face clothes.

Is this a good reason to wipe your legs down in a marathon? I don’t think so….(unless you find yourself with brown colored liquid bodily fluids running down your leg…)

So apart from the fact that the masses of coaches and trainers of the world are imitating a mistake, what is the problem with the exercise. Any movement is good movement, surely? Well, yes and no.

It’s great to be moving. However the general intent of an exercise is to fix one end of the muscle and move or stretch the other end. This makes the muscle work. When you lift your leg backwards, this stretch or strain intended for the hamstring is reduced because of the movement of the back leg. So you are doing an exercise with movement, but a significant reduction in the intended target muscle.

When you lift your back leg up it counterbalances the movement to the front, reducing the stretch and effort. When you go to stand up again, the lower of the leg back down does most of the work. It becomes more of a ballet like balance exercise than a strength exercise. For some that may be all they need, but please, stop masquerading it as a strength exercise!

Put simply you are doing less work.

Now I appreciate that not all can do this exercise full range due to lack of strength or flexibility or balance. However avoiding this challenge is not going to fix the limitations! Start with limited range, and place a premium on increasing the range progressively over time, rather than looking to increase load straightway. Just about every Google image of this exercise has a DB or similar in hand – don’t follow this! Most people cannot get range with their own bodyweight, so don’t add load until you have full range!!!

Just about every gym I go anywhere in the world I see this exercise being done, and it always reminds me of the oil well devices you see littered in the desert, where the lever is long and heavy to assist the oil to be pumped with less energy.

Now for the purists who remember the difference between a single joint and multi-joint movement, they know the single joint movement offers more isolation, and the multi-joint less. By moving the back leg you change the exercise from a (almost) single joint exercise to a double joint exercise.

Now I don’t expect to reverse this mistaken exercise option. It has gone too far. It’s been published without thought by too many well-marketed US ‘gurus’, especially as a key ‘functional’ exercise.

However, for those who would prefer to exercise for a reason better than copying the confusion of a male model at a US photo shoot….here is how I originally intended for you to do this exercise:

Single Leg standing Stiff Legged Deadlift: Let the fun begin! Stand on one leg – have the other foot off the ground, but kept roughly parallel with the leg doing the supporting. Bend the knee slightly, but that knee angle should not change during the exercise (get a partner to watch for this, as it will be tempting to do so!). Now bend at the waist, allowing the back to round and reach slowly towards the floor. If your range allows, touch the floor with the fingertips and return to the starting position. Use a speed of 3 seconds down, 1 sec pause at the ends, and 3 seconds up.

 You may struggle with balance, but persist – you will be developing the muscles in the sole of the foot! The first time you do this you may find you are touching down with the non-supporting foot regularly to avoid falling over. This is ok, but in later workouts, try to minimize this. When you have mastered this exercise, and touching of the ground by the non-supporting leg means terminate the set – this is your challenge.

Don’t be surprised if you can only do 5 reps on day 1! Look to increase the reps from workout to workout. Hold light DB’s in your hand ONLY when you get to 10 reps at the speed indicated. No warm up set necessary.   Remember the weak side rule.

Here’s what it should look like, performed by dual Olympian and Gold medalist (2000)!

The top position

The bottom position

Need more clarity?

Unfortunately a few select individuals in the US thought it was okay to publish this exercise innovation without reference or credit. And created a highly marketed mis-interpretation of my exercise.

So what makes me think the ‘author’ of this Men’s Health article was ‘copying’? Maybe it was their email…

From: name withheld  Sent: Saturday, 4 December 1999 5:18 AM To:kingsports@b022.aone.net.au Subject: Re: Between Sets Newsletter #6

Ian, …It’s funny ‐ I have bben doing your t‐mag leg workouts ( the first two). It seems such as hort workout a.. this is done in a half an hour. But ‐ the pain !!!!!!!!!!!! You weren’t kidding ‐ it is a deep muscle soreness ‐ real intense. Interstingly it is a great workout to introduce females to weigth lifting and training. (A lot of them are scared to lift heavy) Keep them coming…
‐name withheld

Maybe it was the way they re-publishing my content verbatim in multiple ‘publications’….[xii]

Single leg standing stiff leg deadlift: Stand on one leg – have the other foot off the ground, but kept roughly parallel with the leg doing the supporting. Bend the knee slightly, but that knee angle should not change during the exercise (get a partner to watch for this, as it will be tempting to do so!). Now bend at the waist, allowing the back to round and reach slowly towards the floor. If your range allows, touch the floor with the fingertips and return to the starting position.

The first time you do this you may find you are touching done with the non-supporting foot regularly to avoid falling over. This is ok, but in later workouts, try to minimise this. When you have mastered this exercise, touching of the ground by the non-supporting leg means terminate the set – this is your challenge.

Not even a conversion from Australian spelling to US spelling, or editing of the grammar or layout! Just a straight (one of thousands) cut and paste. So yes, the Men’s Health submission was an un-credited, unreferenced submission.

A ‘breakthrough’ in later years – same description, but a name change for the exercise![xiii] [xiv]

Single Leg Romanian Deadlift: Stand on one leg – have the other foot off the ground, but kept roughly parallel with the leg doing the supporting. Bend the knee slightly, but that knee angle should not change during the exercise (get a partner to watch for this, as it will be tempting to do so!). Now bend at the waist, allowing the back to round and reach slowly towards the floor. If your range allows, touch the floor with the fingertips and return to the starting position.

It’s tough to watch an otherwise potentially intelligent species of animal blindly follow a misinterpretation. And its tough to watch the potential of this exercise I developed over years be diluted to look like and exercise when it’s not really doing much.

So unless you think it a worthy use of your training to copy a misinterpreted Men’s Health snippet, STOP LIFTING YOUR LEG!

Returning to the NCAA athlete who received a much-needed correction in exercise interpretation, I asked:

‘So how did you feel about the exercise when you were throwing your leg back?’

To which they replied:

‘Well actually, I could feel the exercise doing anything, and I didn’t understand why I was doing it. I did ask the strength coach, but their answer just didn’t add up’.

Mmm. not surprising. At least some human beings are in touch with their intuition…

The key is this – if you have read this you have been given a chance to stop lifting your leg, hold it parallel to the other, foot just off the ground, and get a real workout – the way it was intended!

[i] King, I., 1998, Strength Specialization Series King Sports International, Brisbane, Aust. (DVD)

[ii] King, I., 1998, Strength Specialization Series, King Sports International, Brisbane. (Audio)

[iii] King, I., 1998, How To Write Strength Training Programs: A Practical Guide, King Sports Publishing, Brisbane, Aust. (Book)

[iv] King, I., 1999, Ian King’s Killer Leg Exercises, t-mag.com (DVD)

[v] King, I., 1999, 12 Weeks of Pain – Limping into October – Pt 1, t-mag.com, 17 Sep 1999. (Article)

[vi] King, I., 1999, Get Buffed!™, 1st Ed., King Sports Publishing, Bris. Aust. (Book)

[vii] King, I., 2000, How To Teach Strength Training Exercises, King Sports Publishing, Brisbane, Aust. (Book)

[viii] King, I., 2000, How To Teach Strength Training Exercises, King Sports International, Brisbane, Aust. (DVD)

[ix] King, I., 2000, Make your legs soar, Men’s Health, November, p. 28-29. (Article)

[x] King, 2001, Advanced Leg Training: Stage 1, Fri, Jan 19, 2001

[xi] Single leg deadlift, Men’s Health, June 2000

[xii] ‘Authors’ name withheld to reduce drawing attention to plagiarists, 2003, Marcocycle, CA USA

[xiii] ‘Authors’ name withheld to reduce drawing attention to plagiarists, 2005, Program Design Bible, CA USA.

[xiv] ‘Authors’ name withheld to reduce drawing attention to plagiarists, The Female Breakthrough, xxx.

Ian King

There is a better way – Part 3: I don’t notice you

/by

In the second phase of the game, only a minute or so in, one of the players successfully bumped off the attempted tackle of an opponent. The attacking player whooped so loudly you could hear him a mile away. The celebration continued for another minute. This is a real live, 2017 example, in a state level talent identified player, playing club sport.

This player’s team lost that game by about 40 points.

This was not, and is not an isolated incident. In the team this young athlete plays in, more celebration is given to individual achievement that team success, although in fairness they have no team success. Or perhaps because of the allowed behavior they have no team success.

There was a time, and still is in the winners in the world of team sports, when the scoreboard did all the talking. However this changed with the focus on individual achievement as a form of performance measurement. The collation and distribution of individual’s player game statistics in team sports may have been the turning point.

In Australian team sports, this change towards a greater focus on individual player game stats became apparent in the late 1990s. In American it would have been a decade or so earlier.

What has been the impact of this increased focus on individual player game statistics on team performance? Suffice to say, any team that fails to control and keep in context this aspect of the game will not be a championship team.

The aim of this article is to provide an introductory insight for coaches into developing the most fundamental key to success in team sports.

The first step

The fundamental first step in determining tactics in team sports is the decision to commit to playing as a team. Now I understand this sounds so obvious you may wonder why I bother mentioning it. I wish I didn’t have to. However the reality of my observations is that tragically this fundamental concept has become lost in coaching practice.

The first step is to decide, as a coach or player, where your commitment to this concept. Do you plan to embrace and execute team first tactics, or individual first tactics?

Now it’s one thing for a player to choose to prioritize their individual game statistics over the team outcome. You could expect that in a world where selfishness and instant gratification are growing trends. However players should not be dictating team culture. Yes, many would like to, and many do attempt to. In the ideal world the team culture is the responsibility of the coach. So what happens to a team where the coach fails to negatively reinforce selfish behavior, or worse, promotes selfish behavior by act or omission? Lack of team success, epidemic in team sport globally.

To clarify the values of the coach in the example where the team prioritizes the individual ‘big hits’, a few weeks after the incident described in the opening paragraph, the coach was heard to say in the half-time speech – at time the team was down about 33-5:

“Now its time to do well as individuals.”

That was this coach’s solution to success in team sport, after giving up on their best efforts team tactics (which were really an extremely sub-standard team approach, more an individual approach pretending to be team). So whilst the concept of team-based tactic as the first step sounds obvious, it apparently is not to what I suggest is the majority of coaches.

The fact that the team in this case study was a losing outfit (finishing in the bottom half of the ladder) is a coaching failure, not a player failure. Yes, we could blame the player/s, however the athletes relying on the wisdom of their elders, their coaches.

The second step

The second step in team-first tactics is to have the ability to identify characteristics of team play, and to positively reinforce them.

Let’s assume a coach at least in theory embraces team-based values. Do they have the skill-set to identify the desired characteristics? We actually need to take it back even one step further – do they even know from a left-brain recall perspective the top five to ten characteristics of team based values tactically speaking? Without at first a theoretical understanding, there is no chance of developing unconscious competence!

The young male athlete came off the basketball court hoping for some encouraging words from his coach in the post game debrief. What he got was the comment

“I don’t notice you out there on the court.”

Wow! Without going into the power of words as it relates to coaching and empowering athletes, this comment revealed a lot about the coach.

So the basketball coach that told the young player that they didn’t notice them out there was, I suggest, another coach doomed for the scrap heap of non-fulfillment, because they were looking at the individual stats, not the scoreboard,

Absolutely, the player’s individual game statistics were not setting the world on fire. But what if the player was one of the dying breed of players whose primary focus was on put team before individual, to do things to to enhance team success as measured on the scoreboard at the expense of looking good individually?

Let me help the coach out with this insight into understanding how players impact the momentum of the game and the scoreboard, irrespective of their individual players statistics. I analyzed three games played by this basketball team in question prior to this disempowering yet enlightening comment by the coach. This it as a great example of a teaching opportunity in the area of coach education, specifically tactical development!

I divided all periods of play into periods of when the player chastised for not being ‘noticeable’ was on the court, and when this player was off the courts. Let’s give this player the code name ‘Player H’. Player H was averaging about 45-50% court time, never starting a game.

Total periods Win Loss Draw
H OFF 12 1 9 2
Averages 8% 75% 17%
Av Points Differential 2 -5 0
H ON 11 4 5 2
Averages 36% 45% 18%
Av Points Differential 3.25 -3% 0

There were 11 periods of play over three game when Player H was ON the court, and 12 periods of play over these three games when Player H was OFF the court. Note this team has not won a game, trial or regular season. The season is 7 games long.

So what do the TEAM stats – as measured by the scoreboard – tell us about Player H’s contribution?

  • When Player H is ON the court, 36% (4) of the playing periods are won by his team. When player H is OFF the court, 8% (1) of the playing periods are won by his team.
  • When Player H is ON the court 45% (5) of the playing periods are lost by his team, compared to 75% (9) when Player H is OFF the court.
  • There is no statistical difference in relation to drawn points periods when Player H is ON (17%) or OFF (18%) the court.
  • The average wining margin of playing periods won when Player H is ON the court is 3.25, compared to the average winning margin of 2 when Player H is off the court.
  • The average losing margin of players periods lost when Player H is ON the court is -3 and the average losing margin for lost playing periods when Player H is OFF the court is -5.

So the court didn’t notice Player H when he was on the court? This is a classic example of coaches failing to understand the impact individual players have on TEAM performance. Failing to understand how individual players contribute to team success is a guarantee to fail as a coach in team sports. Failing to reinforce a TEAM based culture and tactics. And failing on the scoreboard as well.

Additionally, what impact did these words from the coach have on the player? The athletes unsolicited comment:

“With a statement like that, I really want to play for that coach….”

Yes, that was sarcasm used by the young athlete. Cumulatively, the comment contributed to the young athlete questioning whether to continue playing that sport for that institution. How does this help anyone? Not the player, not the institution represented, not the sport. Oh, and not the coach.

So what do you think Coach? Has this helped you notice the ‘Player H’s’ when they are on the court now?

The third step

The third step is to possess the coaching skill-set (as a coach) or influence (as a player) to successfully create this tactical foundation and culture.

When I am coaching new teams and I see this behavior I call it out for what it is – selfish; and provide instant negative reinforcement for it. It is an epidemic in sport that makes it so easy to win in team sports for those coaches and team who understands the value of a TEAM first culture, and have the courage and skillset to implement it.

Let’s assume in the case study presented at the start of this article the coach was committed to team-value based tactics (which we know is not correct). What should or could they have done about this display of individual-centric values by this young athlete?

One solution would have been to ‘drag’ (take off the field, counsel) the player immediately and given them a solid insight into why that behavior is unacceptable and inappropriate. That is, if it had to get that far. These values should have been clarified in the first few weeks of a new team assembling, during training. The clarification of team values is arguably THE MOST IMPORTANT act a coach can do to establish success.

So how can you readily identify TEAM based cultures and tactics vs individual-centric team cultures and tactics? Simply watch when a player passes the ball –did the player pass the ball as a first option, or as a last option, when they have exhausted all their own options?

Therefore how to do you change team tactics to a team-value based culture? Conduct drills and provide positive reinforcement verbally to unselfish play, where the player’s decision making reflects the internal question of ‘what would be best for the team?’

I understand that the greatest challenge for any coach seeking to implement this is that the team performance may suffer in the learning phase. This short term loss will be more than off-set by the long term rewards for having a team-value tactical culture.

In my experience implementing this tactical strategy, the key is initially to reward to process (e.g. of passing as the first option, not the last option) over the outcome. Yes, the parents on the side of the field will be critical because their ‘Young Johnny’ could have scored had he been selfish, or the team could have ‘won today’ had he been selfish. Perhaps the pass was dropped, and the score did not occur. Or perhaps the team lost. What astounds me is all the lip service given to ‘long-term athlete development’. This concept is NOT JUST RELEVANT to physical development (although I suggest most coaches who talk about this fail to develop this physical anyway but that is another discussion) – it also relates to technical (skill), tactical (tactics) and psychological development. Not just also – probably more importantly!

Historic influences on this individual-centric team value

So where did this player driven and coach accepted inappropriate behaviors evolve? In this discussion, we will look beyond the obvious human trait temptation of selfishness and meeting individual needs.

In Australian team sports, this change towards a greater focus on individual player game stats became apparent in the late 1990s. In American it would have been a decade or so earlier.

The advent of individual statistics in a team sport, supported by ‘strength and conditioning’ programs offering short term gain for long term loss, have been two forces most coaches either lack the wisdom to see through, or simply lack the understanding to decipher the information. If a coach fails to correctly identify the common denominators between winning and losing, they will never fulfill their potential as a coach. Sadly, from my observation over the last four decades, this fate awaits the majority of them.

I have seen many school sporting cultures where ‘young Jonny’ will never pass the ball, because he believes (and his belief is continuously reinforced by coach and parents behavior) that if he does things that make him look good, he will receive accolades. Forget about the scoreboard. As long as ‘young Jonny’ looks good!

This is where ‘strength and conditioning’ post the late 1990s in Australian sport has come to lend a hand. The short-term benefit available to all young athletes is that they can gain the equivalent of a year of two of physical maturation in one off-season in the gym. This means that they can make those extra meters in contact, make the big hits, look better statistically and attract the attention of the uneducated observer.

What suffers? Team work. Team success. When ‘young Jonny’ tucks the ball under his arm in rugby, one thing becomes very evident – he is not going to pass the ball! It doesn’t matter if there was an overlap or a extra man, ‘young Jonny’ is going to hold onto that ball.

Conclusion

I suggest that any act or omission by a coach that reinforces individual centric values and tactics in team sport dooms that team to failing to fulfill their potential. Based on my observations, I suggest two things:

  1. The majority of coaches in the current landscape lack the value of or the ability to identify and correct team-value tactics and culture.
  2. The trend has and will continue to move away from team-value tactics and culture.

For example, what we have now, say in Australian rugby, are a team full of ‘young Jonny’s’ who either do not possess the skill set to run and pass at the same time, or who choose not to pass. Watch any game of rugby union in Australia, from kids to the national team, and you will see a number of passes per phase that would average below two. You could be forgiven for thinking you were watching 1970’s rugby league, in an era when the skills were low and the physicality was all that was on offer.

I use rugby union as example; however all team sports have suffered the same fate. I often wonder why the majority of these sporting events are called team sports. The majority of male players in Australian team sports are clearly committed to demonstrating their physical superiority over the opponent, with little regard for team outcome.

On the flip side, winning in team sport has never been easier, because most coaches and team fail at the fundamental tactical development step. Imagine how many other steps they fail at?!

So what is the solution? Coach education. Not just the theory of coaching. The education must include the ‘art’ of coaching. And who by? Coaches with personal mastery, not ‘coaches’ with theoretical knowledge only.  What are the chances of this happening? Not high. What will happen to those athletes, coaches, sports, countries or teams that do follow this? Great things.

Another reason why success in sport is so easy. So few will ever take the steps that result in success. So a great coach in a great sport has really very little competition.

 

Note:

For those athletes and coaches who are concerned about the direction of training and want to believe there is a better way – congratulations. There is a better way. We have spend the last four decades discovering better ways to train, and we teach these better ways when we work with athletes or coaches. The KSI Coaching Program aims to provide you with the tools to train athletes and others in their highest and best interests, with no interest in what the dominant trend is or will be in the future. Learn more about KSI Coach Education here https://kingsports.net/courses/

Ian King

The decline of Australian sporting performances

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Australia’s sports performances are in decline.  Yes, it’s a generalization, and if this is not the case in your sport, I am happy for you. However. to showcase this suggestion, I have selected five sports or sporting events that possess a proud and long history of international dominance or success. Sports interwoven in the Australian cultural psyche. And then, more importantly, I will address the question why I believe this is happening.

The five sports or sporting events I will reflect upon include swimming, tennis, rugby union, cricket and the Summer Olympic Games.

The recent World Swimming Championships gave Australia, a proud swimming nation, the lowest gold medal count since the 1980s:

“The medal tally of the world swimming championships just concluded in Budapest makes disturbing reading for an Australian …Australia’s gold medal count may have slumped at this event, but on total medals Australia are still equal second with Russia and China. All trail far in the wake of the sport’s only superpower, the USA (38).

However the gold standard is gold medals and by that score Australia have not sunk so low since the 1980s.”[1]

Australian tennis is in a slump. That’s the title of a recent national newspaper article.[2] The article discussed the recent Wimbledon Grand Slam performance by Australian tennis players:

“The Canberran led Australia’s nine-player contingent at the All England Club, with only qualifier Arina Rodionova advancing to the second round.

Kyrgios’s opening-round retirement with hip injury, coupled with difficult draws, meant there were no Australian men in the second round here for the first time since 2012 and only the second time since 1938.”

In the top 100 men’s world ranking Australia has currently only three players. [3]

In rugby union Australia is currently ranked number four in the world. Whilst a slide from say second to fourth or even third to fourth seems minimal, it represents a significant decline in the nations world ranking. Australia hit its low point in 2015 with ranking of 6th, and is currently sitting in 4th. Not acceptable for a team that sat in 2nd place for most of the first decade of this century.

To reinforce this point, at a provincial level, if the guaranteed finals appearance to a conference winner was removed, Australia may not have had a team in the eight-team finals in the last two years.

In Test cricket, Australia has had more months in number one sport in the ICC world rankings than any other team since the inception of this measurement method in 2003. However Australia test cricket current sits at third place, a long way behind South Africa (2nd) and India (1st), with only a slender lead over England, New Zealand, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. [4]

What about Olympic Games performances? At end of the 2016 Sumer Olympic Games in Rio, Australia was ranked in tenth position on the medal table with a total of 29 medals (8 gold, 11 silver, and 10 bronze). This was Australia’s lowest medal tally and lowest rank since the 1992 Olympics.[5] Australia peaked at the 2000 Sydney Olympics with 58 medals in total, and has declined in a linear fashion every Summer Games since.[6]

So what’s behind this pattern of decline? Everyone’s got an opinion, however few have participated and observed professional sport at the elite level for nearly forty years as I have. My suggestions will be dismissed by most, and benefitted by few.

Understand this – misinterpret the cause-effect relationship for losing, and you will fail to win. That’s why it’s so easy to dominate in sport – few are on track with their interpretation and solutions. Everyone’s got an opinion, few are qualified by track record as measured by the scoreboard to give them.

I believe that in the top three reasons why Australian sport is in decline is the way physical preparation is being implemented in this country. Let me give you some history.

The word ‘strength and conditioning’ is an American term, coined in 1981 by the then National Strength Coaches Association of America, who following their 1978 origin, realized they wanted to add something more to the title than strength. This belated lip service didn’t and hasn’t changed anything.

The NSCA was begun for college strength coaches who were involved in American football, that is ‘gridiron’. Whether is it optimal for this sport is another question, however few athletes in that sport run far enough to find out their muscle imbalance, and even fewer touch the ball to find out their technical limitations.

I suggest, after many decades of observation and involvement, that the original intent of the NSCA has not changed, and that the training method proposed are not suitable to the majority of sports.

So in 1988 the NSCA came to Australia. How do I know? Because I was part of it’s inception. However up until about the mid 1990’s there was less than five (yes, 5) people employed full time in this industry. Which meant the impact of the arrival of this American influence was very, very limited.

This all changed in the late 1990s, and into the 2000s. Now, post 2010, nearly every high school in the country (as in the US) has its own ‘S&C’ program, and most private high schools have their own in-house ‘S&C’ coach. Every teenage talent-identification program, every late teens/early twenties development squad, and every elite and professional squad have their own service providers and programs. In fact, in most private high schools, about 50% of the total training time is given to ‘S&C’ activities, and failure or refusal of the young athletes to participate in these dubious activities results in non-selection.

Australia now has twenty plus (20+ years, 1995 to present) of formal, compulsory American ‘strength and conditioning’ influenced programs. Now the impact is being felt.

So what are some of the reasons I am adamant that the sporting decline in this country is due to the way physical preparation is being done, and laying most of this at the feet of the ‘strength and conditioning’?

In tennis all national programs have ‘strength and conditioning’ compulsory from the age of 12 years upwards. In my observations and from my discussions with players and coaches, about 80% of all these young athletes are injured at any one time such that their ability to train and play pain free is compromised. Stress fractures of the lumbar are common place prior to the age of 16 years, and surgery involving shaving of the hip is rising at a rate where the statistics are looking like over 50% of the elite nationally ranked tennis players in Australia will have this surgery during their career.

Quite simply, most elite talent identified tennis players in this country will have surgery prior to the age of 20 years (more likely 18 years), and will be forced into retirement due to their physical inability to play the game by or prior to the age of 24 yrs.

Currently Australia has three top 100 world ranked men’s players, and at least two of these cannot complete tournaments currently due to serious, chronic injuries (Bernard Tomic and Nick Kyrgios). Tomic (ranked 93) is 24 and Kyrgios (ranked 20) is 22 years of age. Jordan Thompson (ranked 75) is 23 years of age. No Australian player in the top 100 men’s world ranking is over 24, and this is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

On the basis of my hypothesis, Tomic at 24 years of age, is on the verge of fading out of the top 100. His ranking movement supports my hypothesis.

Now for rugby. The majority of talent identified young rugby players (>50%) will have surgery before they are twenty years of age. At least 25% will have surgery before they graduate from high school. The average number of surgery for a rugby player who plays into his late 20’s is about five.

Let me make this very clear – NO-ONE plays optimal sport on the background of surgery. It is physically impossible. There is a whole arm of medical and paramedical people really enjoying this situation. But the players are not benefitting.

I began preparing athletes in all these sports at the elite level in the 1980s, and have been involved in coach education at a state, national and overseas level from the early 1990s. I have a number of decades of involvement, contribution and participation. I have witnessed these changes first hand. This is not theory. You can argue it’s not science, but you can also put your head in the sand and say it’s not happening.

The trajectory is downwards. I have grave concerns for the physical (and mental) health of Australian athletes moving forward. Additionally, whilst I don’t advocate litigation in sport, the glaring failure of the duty of care by sporting bodies, institutions and schools towards the athletes in their care may only be addressed as a result of a civil suite.

In the 1980s strength training was an element of athletic preparation that was missing. The content that is being provided in ‘strength and conditioning’ in Australia, is in my opinion, inappropriate. Grossly inappropriate. Further exacerbation of the negative impact this training is having on sports performance is that it is taking the place of training that is far more valuable and important to long term athlete development – such as skill (technical) development.

In closing, is this just an Australian issue? No, I suggest, based on the Australian case study, that any nation will suffer the impacts of their nationalized application of American influence ‘strength & conditioning’ after if not before the 20 years anniversary.

I believe for example that the United Kingdom was about a decade behind Australia in embracing ‘strength & conditioning’. UK sport is currently out-performing Australian sport. In swimming, the media recognize that England is now ahead of Australia in swimming.

“The Brits are now better at swimming than Australia. Yes, you read that right.

The medal tally of the world swimming championships just concluded in Budapest makes disturbing reading for an Australian. Occasionally we have to accept that England will win the Ashes and the English rugby team will triumph but our superiority in swimming was a constant, until now.

A nation that has less than a dozen Olympic pools and is the world’s leading creator of head-up breaststrokers has been more successful at this year’s major championship than one bathed in sunshine most of the year round and, well, swimming in facilities.” [7]

In rugby England and Ireland are ranked ahead of Australia in current world rankings, and Scotland and Wales are not far behind.[8]

Rank Team Points
1  New Zealand 94.78
2  England 90.14
3  Ireland 85.39
4  Australia 84.63
5  South Africa 84.16
6  Scotland 82.47
7  Wales 81.73

In cricket England is only one close place behind Australia:[9]

•   ICC Test Championship
Rank Team Matches Points Rating
1  India 32 3925 123
2  South Africa 26 3050 117
3  Australia 31 3087 100
4  England 34 3362 99

And in tennis the UK have the same number of top 100 men’s tennis players as does Australia (3) however their rankings average is far superior to Australia. And they have players older than 24 years of age in this category, unlike Australia.

So this suggests to me that at around 2025 the UK may seem the same sporting decline Australia has, as at that point they will have had twenty or more years of American influenced ‘strength & conditioning’. Now I cannot say if they have applied this training to the teenage athletes in the same ‘enthusiastic’ and compulsory way that Australia has, however I suspect they may have.

What few appear to understand is that there are many ways to gain short-term advantage in sport, however few of these have long term advantages.

For example it is very easy to take a teenage athlete and accelerate the physical maturation process through say strength training, which is basically what ‘strength & conditioning’ is, despite the belated addition and presence of the word ‘conditioning’. So you can take a 14 year old and turn them in to the equivalent of a 17 year old on the following season. However there are many shortcomings with this, not the least the absence of high-level skill development, that will result in long term deficiencies. There is also the muscle imbalances that typically result from the poorly designed strength training programs that are epidemic in sport. So what looks good at the twelve-month mark sours quickly a few years later.

The failure to take a long-term approach to athlete preparation is a key factor in the decline of sports performance.

So why is not affecting the origin country? My hypothesis is at odds with the US dominance in world sport. I have battled with this question also. Here is my conclusion to date. America is blessed with a high population of what I call ‘load resistant’ athletes. A population of 300 plus million plus the gene pool of the whole world to recruit from. The question I also ask is ‘How good could America be if it had to optimize training, instead of getting by on its gene pool?’

So what are Australian sports doing about this decline? It’s early days and I don’t want to limit the possibilities. I will say this however – are they going to recognize the factors I do? Do they have the courage to make the changes to reverse these trends? These are the big questions. I could tell you what I think is going to happen (my coaching experience talking here), however I am going to remain open minded and optimistic (the humanitarian in me!).

However I can only guarantee that the challenge I have highlighted will be overcome and reversed by teams and individuals who share my vision and values on how to train athletes. Will that be you?

Note:

For those athletes and coaches who are concerned about the direction of training and want to believe there is a better way – congratulations. There is a better way. I have spend the last four decades discovering better ways to train, and we teach these better ways when we work with athletes or coaches. The KSI Coaching Program aims to provide you with the tools to train athletes and others in their highest and best interests, with no interest in what the dominant trend is or will be in the future. Learn more about KSI Coach Education here https://kingsports.net/courses/

References

[1] http://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport/olympics/brits-are-now-better-at-swimming-than-australia/news-story/64f60fb04fdd0282ce057ee48b78c2ef

[2] http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/wimbledon-2017-australian-tennis-in-a-slump-with-only-nick-kyrgios-ranked-in-the-world-top-20/news-story/282426075bd0d235215433b9f07f2930

[3] http://www.espn.com/tennis/rankings

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_Test_Championship

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_at_the_2016_Summer_Olympics

[6] http://www.topendsports.com/world/countries/australia/events/olympics/medals.htm

[7] http://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport/olympics/brits-are-now-better-at-swimming-than-australia/news-story/64f60fb04fdd0282ce057ee48b78c2ef

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Rugby_Rankings

[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_Test_Championship

Ian King

Guidance for the new physical preparation coach series – Pt 1: Respect & research

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In 1999 I wrote the first edition of the book ‘So You Want to Become a Physical Preparation Coach’. It was the first and only book of it’s kind at the time offering professional and business guidance to physical preparation coaches. Twenty years later this guidance is as relevant as it was then. However little advancements have occurred in the ensuing 20 years in the professional practices in our industry – physical preparation. Here is a series of unsolicited, free ‘tips’ guiding those who cup has enough space in to absorb them.

Pt 1: Respect and research more experienced practitioners before you dialogue with them

There is a lot about the legal profession I don’t like. For example their example to ‘churn’ work, which means to generate unnecessary billable hours. But here is a few things that I do like. For starters their professional rates. Even the lowest, least experienced lawyer is billed out a triple figure hourly rate. But the one aspect I envy the most is their respect of seniority.

Now I belief respect needs to be earned, and more years in the industry does not equate or guarantee competency. But what it does do is allow a young, inexperienced professional the opportunity to study the track record of the more experienced person, and at the very minimum communicate with them with respect to what they have learnt about their professional journey.

I just got off the phone with a young ‘high performance coach’. I recently was hired by an athlete form within a team he is employed to service, and he had respectively asked me to call him. So I did. When he asked me to outline what training I was doing in the various physical qualities, I asked a few key questions.

How many years have you been in the industry? A year or two. Right.

Have you heard of my name before? Ah, no.

Have you read any of my published works? Ah, no.

Okay. Now this young man lives within a 30 km radius of where I reside for parts of the year. His professional academic training was probably done in the same city mine way. He is on his way to a PhD, God bless him. But this is not how you optimize the opportunity you get when you dialogue with someone with my experience.

In relation to the strength training I am doing, he felt the need to understand it. Was it corrective exercises, as he had been led to believe from the athlete. Now I don’t use that term, and I don’t believe in it. The impact of an exercise is determined by the result on the body, not by a pre-determined label. Now Paul Chek and others did a great job of popularizing this term and concept, God bless them. But I don’t use that term. You can be doing one the most ‘classic’ ‘corrective exercises’ and it could be damaging the athlete. So how can we dialogue on terms we don’t share common ground on?

Was my speed work maximal or technique based? Now we are in the few week of training and he knows that. My training approach to speed is well documented, from my presentation at the original SAQ seminar in New Orleans in the early to mid-90s to my collaboration with the late Charlie Francis. To my development and championing of the concept ‘reverse periodization’ through to my well published content about how I make substantial change athlete’s speed with sub-maximal efforts.

Now I may not be the smoothest person to talk to in circumstances like this. SO when the young man began to justify his questions with the ‘I just have the best intentions of the athlete in mind’ I could not help myself. If you knew what I knew about the athlete, if you could read their bodies like I can, if you knew what you and your colleagues were doing to them by act or omission that was damaging them and decreasing their athletic – you would either quit really quickly or get better really quickly.

So we then went to ‘I need to know what the athlete is doing in training because if they get injured I will get blamed’. Great theory, but again, if you knew what I knew about their injury potential and the relationship between what is being done to them or not being done to them in training and their injury potential, you would not sleep at night.

Then the request to meet in person next Tuesday to ensure we are on the same page. Now I don’t know about how others operate but warm feelings don’t pay the bills. Who is paying for the meeting? Should the client be expected to pay for what is ultimately going to be a coach education meeting? Should this young coach have a free consultation whilst many around the world put their money on the table by attending seminars or enrolling in course with their hard earned cash? I don’t think so.

I raised this point – if I was a second year law graduate and I was to a Queens Council (QC) or equivalent, would I be asking them to justify and explain themselves? Probably not! I expect that junior lawyer would respectively take the opportunity to learn – irrespective of who was the primary contact with the athlete (and it is usually the junior lawyer!).

Now maybe I could have done what most might do and submissively answered his question. But in my humble opinion the way this industry conducts itself, including the lack of appropriate respect and deferment to those who have paved the way in this industry, is simply not good enough.

Now I understand the Australian class structure mentally, inherited from our English roots – we are all the same, no one could have risen above. However that is simply not the case. There are more senior coaches, and some of them actually have something to learn from.

If you want to fulfill your potential, be the best you can be, if you really care for the best interests of the athlete – stop being so average. Step up to a level of professionalism that whilst absent in our industry, is something that would serve our industry.

When I arranged to sit with one of the USA’s most successful ‘strength and conditioning coaches’ Al Vermeil for the first time in the late 1980s I had done my research, and I took respectfully the opportunity to learn. When I collaborated with him regarding an athlete in the Chicago Bulls, I didn’t ask him to explain himself, and I didn’t go to the clichés of ‘I just want the best for the athlete; or ‘we need to be on the same page’; or ‘I will get blamed if they injure themselves’. I could go on ad nausea of these examples. So I am not preaching from hypocrisy. I did exactly what I expect you should do.

Even if the industry doesn’t change, you can change. You, the new professional in physical preparation, can and should be better. And this is just one way to do this. However the teacher is not likely to appear if the student is not ready….

Ian King

There is a better way – Part 2: Don’t look to ‘strength & conditioning’ to get your skill development

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In the late 1980s a European coach brought me a North American winter sport gliding athlete and told me that the athlete lacked certain skills and asked that I create them in the gym. I did my best to keep a straight face, assuming that this was an isolated case and I would not likely face too many conversations of this nature. Unfortunately the reverse has occurred. The world has moved further towards the belief that the North American ‘strength and conditioning’ movement will solve all athletic problems. It won’t. Rather, it’s creating them.

To place this message in context, let’s get on common ground with vernacular. Influenced by the seminal works of Hungarian turned Canadian Tudor Bompa, I divide athlete development into four categories – technical, tactical, physical and psychological.   How important is technical or skill development? Not only do I rank it number one, the timing is critical. There is a possibility that the window of adaptation is highest at the younger ages and closes over time.

How do we develop skill? By rehearsing the specific skill. I mean the SPECIFIC skill, whether taught in part or whole. How many times has the athlete executed the skill in the training session? How many times has the athlete executed the skill in their career to date?

What I am NOT referring to is the use of ‘apparently’ specific exercises to develop the skill.

There are optimal strategies of skill development that progress the athlete from non-intense to more intense execution, from non-stressful to higher stress execution, from low volume to higher volume execution and so on. Failure to optimally implement skill develop impedes skill develop.

However one of the greatest killers of skill development in western world sport is the imbalance between technical (skill) development and physical development (read ‘strength and conditioning’ if that helps). With the continual lowering of the age at which young athletes are expected to join physical preparation programs, this alone is reducing their skill development. There was a time in the North America (probably in the 1960 ad 1970s) and in Australia and New Zealand (the 1970s and 1980s) where there were no formal ‘srength and conditioning services’ provided to the young athletes. I suggest these times were more balance in their time allocation relative speaking to skill development.

I predict that in the decades to come we will have ‘strength and conditioning’ programs in primary schools (ages 6-12 years), and I imagine this process may have begun. I suggest this will contribute to a further decline in skill development.

Physical preparation coaches are not taught, by and large, how to teach sports skills, nor are they taught how to balance the time and energy development of the four areas of athlete development. They are taught a narrow content of ‘this is how you do strength and conditioning’. Unfortunately sports coaches for the most part are no better educated, and have accepted the handover to the ‘strength and conditioning’ coach.

I have seen many examples where a teenage athlete will spend as much time in the gym as they will in their technical AND tactical development. This is not consistent with my interpretation of their relative needs.

What I do readily acknowledge is that the early advancement of the physical qualities gives athletes and coaches the perception of superiority over their opponents, in the same way an earlier maturing athlete feels superior to his less developed yet same ages peers in sport. However this short-term elation almost always gives way to the disappointment of the realization that the long term limiting performance factor is the skill development.

To guide you in the first instance, I suggest that ‘physical development should not exceed skill development’. At least not until you believe that athlete needs no further improvement in skill. Because once they default to physical dominance, it is less likely that further skill development will result.

Not only is the western world spending too much time in the strength training gym, there is also an unfounded believe that to have a ‘tool’ in the hand of the athlete will provide superior results in skill development. For example, you do not have to have resistance bands in your hand to optimize skill development. In fact, for the most part, doing so will impair skill development.

A long forgotten tenant of skill development is the caution towards the use of external loading to develop a skill based sport adaptation. The challenge with this is the reality that if athlete may modify the actual technique that should be developed to a modified technique aimed at overcoming or dealing with the external load. The key to any application of external load in a skill development drill is the wisdom to know how little volume you need to get an adaptation, and what the threshold of volume would be that might result in an inappropriate adaptation. This level of coaching wisdom is rarely found. In the interim I suggest you stay away from it.

To give a very specific example, the development of the ability of a number 2 in rugby union to throw a ball accurately into a lineout does not (and I suggest for the most part should not) require the use of resistance tubing. Rather I would prefer to see higher volume skill training, supported at an appropriate time with low volume non-specific strength training (when I say non-specific I mean not as specific as mimicking the action) at an appropriate time in their development. Yes there are a number of subjective comments in this guidance, such is the ‘art’ of coaching.

Ideally I would like to see a shift back towards the prioritization of skill development, and the reduced exposure of all athletes, and in particular the young athlete, for formal ‘dryland’ or ‘strength and conditioning’ training. What is happening is not good enough, and the athlete is paying the price. The good news is there is a better way. The question remains – will you go there?

 

Note:

For those athletes and coaches who are concerned about the direction of training and want to believe there is a better way – congratulations. There is a better way. I have spend the last four decades discovering better ways to train, and we teach these better ways when we work with athletes or coaches. The KSI Coaching Program aims to provide you with the tools to train athletes and others in their highest and best interests, with no interest in what the dominant trend is or will be in the future. Learn more about KSI Coach Education here https://kingsports.net/courses/