How Did The Ancient Day Athletes.....

Family Update

Well, I am back in NY at the Speed Academy waiting for my wife and kids to travel from IN to be with me. They will be here for a couple weeks and then head back. I will be at the Speed Academy for most of July and then head back to IN in August so I can have a couple weeks of fun with the kids before school starts up.

I am going to try to get more involved with my girls sports programs at their elementary school so I want to be back to Indiana as soon as possible.

I just want to say one more time how appreciative I am for all the words of support I received from many of you on the passing of my father.

Before there were trainers

I would consider my coaching style very natural when it comes to multi-directional speed development. I can only imagine that in the ancient days there were not too many athletic development facilities geared toward speed development, or coaches that focused on speed development for that matter. Yet I bet there were some incredible athletes just like there are now. So if I were to describe my natural coaching style it would be very much based off what athletes did years and years ago.

Let's remember that the body is a fantastic machine. It was designed to be a problem solver. What this means in multi-directional speed training is when an athlete is not in the ideal body position to make a quick explosive acceleration movement it will adjust. If the feet are too narrow one foot will widen to create a better angle to push off while the other prepares for contact and drive.

If the athlete needs to decelerate the body will instinctively use a foot plant that slows momentum. The body has innate abilities to react and move- we should not be messing with this.

The instinct of the body to find the appropriate angle will occur even when body is in a poor athletic position. A good example is when the athlete stands too tall. The proper angle will be found but the angle is based off the current height of the athlete. So the body does it's job correctly but because the stance is poor the movement is not as efficient as it could be. Now, if we get the athlete to get low or "In the Tunnel" they will find the best angle for acceleration.

This is what often happens with many coaches; they feel that because the athlete didn't move well the natural reactions the athlete used are hurting them. When in actuality the instinctive movement was correct but the starting athletic stance was the problem. Fix the stance and you fix the problem.

My style of coaching is to always look at what the body wants to do instinctively and make the adjustments when efficient movement is not met. The inefficient movement is usually due to poor stance, lack of mobility, or laziness. It is our job as coaches to recognize the problem and clean it up.

Recently I watched a soccer player do some ball handling drills and notices his body was moving correctly for the stance he was in- the problem was that the stance was not appropriate for efficient movement. So the correction was to fix the stance and body position and the skill improved tremendously.

Think about it. Humans didn't start becoming great movers only since speed coaches were around. They could move just fine using their natural instincts and abilities.

Yours in Speed,

Lee

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