The goal of the performance coach is to improve on-field performance, not necessarily to make improvements in the weight room or practice environment.
This becomes hard because we often “practice for practice” or train for the weight room instead of train for performance. We have this misconception that having success in practice or having clean training equates to having success in a subsequent game. This is actually not the case, and is likely the opposite. It’s a sign practice/training is not representative or challenging and we are likely not providing opportunities for failure or exposing athletes to anxiety and pressure that comes with sport.
The reality is sports are tough, exposing athletes to tremendous amounts of pressure, anxiety, and unpredictable environments. How would we expect an athlete to perform in these settings if our training/practice is safe and predictable?
So what does this all mean?
Our training should drive a learning environment that transfers to on-field performance and is retained when the athlete is under the arousal, stress and pressure of a game.
How can this be done?
Well, it starts with perception – arguably the most important aspect of sport success. It’s a common misconception that simply strength or speed is most important for success, but in reality it’s an athlete’s ability to perceive pertinent information and put that into action, quickly and accurately.
It is an athlete’s ability to perceive and act on information accurately that wins ballgames.
The superiority of highly skilled athletes resides in their ability to perceive and use context-specific information from their sport and environment (Young & Farrow, 2013). Higher skilled athletes use the kinematic information from the environment and apply a motor response quicker and more accurately than lower skilled athletes. This link between the stimulus and motor response is often referred to as perception-action coupling (Davids, 2005). The stimulus will dictate the motor response, thus the need for training to expose athletes to context specific stimuli in order to produce desired motor responses that will occur during sport.
Understand in many cases, this means athletes will struggle and fail during training – it shouldn’t be safe and easy. Coaches need to get out of the mindset that mistakes and struggle are bad, but instead a necessary part of the growth process. It means athletes are on the edge of their comfort zone and reaching into their learning zone.
It also means we need to appreciate every athlete will be different – their mechanics, movement strategies, perceptions, and responses. It’s time to move beyond the days of trying to make everybody move the same way – they must squat in this stance, to this depth, they must change direction in this specific position, they must make this type of cut in that situation, etc. We have to appreciate differences in movement strategies by each individual athlete and understand we can’t try to make an athlete move in a singular way we perceive as correct.
So what are some ways to make your training session steeped in learning opportunities? Here are some ideas of how to have a plan of attack during different phases on training.
Warm-Up
Should the warm-up just be used to raise body temperature, increase ROM, slowly prepare the body for the training OR can we be more productive with our warm-up? Can we initiate the perceptual process and start to get our athletes more in-tuned to perceptual information?
I say YES
We’ve established, one of the most important skills for sport performance is the ability to perceive key kinematic information. So wouldn’t it be wise to give our athlete as much exposure to this as possible?
We use our warm-up as a means to give opportunities to perceive and act in a controlled and simplified environment – as a foundation to the more advanced and chaotic environments they’ll be exposed to later in our training.
This doesn’t have to be complicated or advanced, simply take many of the movements you’re already doing – shuffles, angled shuffles, skips, crossover runs, BW squats, BW lunges – and just add a stimulus.
What’s great is when you watch closely, you’ll see athletes employ strategies for scanning and you’ll notice they learn (on their own) where to look and what body parts to focus on.
Higher skilled athletes have more efficient visual search strategies, spent more time fixating on important kinematic information, and they search more systematically and focus on the critical information to predict movements (Mann et al. 2007) –
Our athletes are now competing and intentful during warm-ups. We’ll have athletes telling their partner they’re predictable, that they can read them – that is great feedback and makes athletes aware of their movement strategies on a very basic level.
Can’t beat a warm-up that prepares athletes for these perceptive and reactive strategies.
Reactive Warmup Movements
Reactive Drop Lunges
Movement Training
Agility and on-field movement is the most misunderstood aspect in sports performance. We get so locked into seeing a movement in a game and try to replicate that movement in a closed/pre-planned setting and think we’re doing a service to our athletes.
Getting athletes to choreograph movements, count steps, and internally focus on the nuances of a drill DO NOT help athletes in sport – where movements are not choreographed, steps differ, and each “play” offers a wide array of movement possibilities.
“Getting athletes to choreograph movements, count steps, and internally focus on the nuances of a drill DO NOT help athletes in sport”
We somehow think doing something predictable, over and over again, will help doing something that is unpredictable. In developing skilled movers it’s not about learning specific commands or movements, rather having a diverse and adaptable movement library to pull from in various situations (Faubert et al, 2012).
There is an inherent link between the stimulus and motor response, and this is often referred to as perception-action coupling (Davids et al, 2005). The stimulus and how an athlete perceives that stimulus will dictate the motor response. Thus the need for training to expose athletes to context specific stimuli in order to produce desired motor responses that will occur during sport.
When looking at movement, it’s always important to remember that an athlete’s movement is based on their perception to a stimulus and what they sense in that specific situation. Their movement solution was correct and optimal for them, in that specific moment – even if you think it is wrong. You do not see or feel what they did in that moment, thus it is unwise to try to change their movement without first asking and digging into the how and why they arrived at that movement solution.
So when trying to develop technique, it needs to be done in an open environment – keep the perception-action cycle. This doesn’t have to be chaotic or involve dozens of athletes – simply initiating basic movements with a human stimulus, altering stances, transitions, distances, and speeds into your normal drills can go along ways.
For example, instead of doing sprints, or shuffles, or 5-10-5’s (insert any COD drill) off a whistle from a 2-point stance – initiate with a human response, from a different stance, use different angles, and vary space.
When you watch the following videos, notice how every rep is slightly different – different stances, different distances, different objectives, different movements, different spacing, different constraints, etc. Just as in a game, every single play is slightly different and requires a different movement solution – our training should look the same.
When making my movement checklist, here are some things I try to account for
- Use a human stimulus as much as possible
- Shared affordances – Sports isn’t always 1v1, often it’s multiple athletes, and multiple levels all shaping the environment.
- Work to shape the environment to provide 360-degrees of movement – sports are not cleanly linear or lateral, they are hybrids of angles and movements. So is the drill I’m shaping addressing curvilinear, backward, rotational, and angled movements?
- Keep drills short and sweet (2-5 seconds), throwing in a slightly longer drill from time to time is ok but don’t turn your movement training into an aerobic capacity drill
- Do I have athletes that would benefit from adding some specific context (ball, implement, field, spacing)
- Manipulate time and space EVERY REP
- Keep score – this raises anxiety and pressure which will change movement behavior and better match the anxiety and pressure of an actual game
- Embrace mistakes – I want to see mistakes, this means the environment is challenging
Constraint Manipulation
Reactive “T”
Running Back Drill
Cat and Mouse
Find the Ball
Elusive Drill
Weight Room
Believe it or not, motor learning and skill acquisition doesn’t have to end in the weight room. There are some things we can do to help bridge the field and the weight room.
Now, I’m not saying the weight room should become a place of gimmics and lack to true training – addressing the basics of strength and power still has their important place, but we can do more.
For example, just by adding a clap/whistle to a lift can help athletes that start their sports with this stimulus become more adept and in-tuned to the stimuli.
I had a track athlete that just had horrible reaction out of the blocks – now there are many factors that contribute to this poor reaction; BUT, one thing we did was make many of her lifts reactive – off a clap/whistle to simulate the gun in the blocks.
In her words, she became more comfortable in this situation, learned how to keep tension, and this all transferred to her improving her response time and mechanics out of the blocks. Because we brought some of the sensation and stimulus from her sport into the weight room, she became more in-tuned and adaptable in the actual blocks.
Manipulating equipment, raising arousal, using specific implements during rest periods are all easy ways to bring aspects of the sport into the weight room. Simply adding a blocking pad to sleds, catching a football during rest periods, using block starts in potentiation complexes, and initiating lifts of a stimulus are all easy ways to make the weight room more representative without losing it’s basic, general aspects.
There’s a reason things like The Difference pad and LeCharles Bentley’s equipment is so successful. They bring context and specificity, in the right manner, into the weight room.
Doing little things like the above, in all phases of an athletes preparation, go a long ways in increasing their perceptual refinement and awareness of a skill set needed for success. In addition, I guarantee you’ll increase effort, buy-in, and confidence in your athletes– after all, it is our job to connect the athlete with the big picture and that is on-field performance.
References
Davids, K., Renshaw, I., & Glazier, P. (2005). Movement models from sports reveal fundamental insights into coordination processes. Exercise and sport sciences reviews, 33(1), 36-42
Faubert, J., & Sidebottom, L. (2012). Perceptual-cognitive training of athletes. Journal of Clinical Sport Psychology, 6(1), 85-102.
Mann, D. T., Williams, A. M., Ward, P., & Janelle, C. M. (2007). Perceptual-cognitive expertise in sport: A meta-analysis.Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 29(4), 457-478.
About Michael Zwiefel
Michael Zweifel is the owner and head of sports performance for “Building Better Athletes” performance center in Dubuque, Iowa.
Michael is a CSCS, IYCA certified practitioner, and was the all time NCAA leading receiver with 463 receptions in his playing days at University of Dubuque.
Building Better Athletes (BBA) is committed to an evidence based practice towards sports performance, and attaching physical preparation from every angle possible – physical, mental, nutritional, soft-tissue, mobility. Our focus is building the athlete from the ground up by mastering the fundamentals of movement mastery, strength/power training, recovery modalities, and giving athletes ownership of the Other 23.
Using these methods and principles, BBA has been fortunate to help athletes to:
- 5 NFL Players
- 1 CFL Player
- 1 Gatorade State Player of the Year (Basketball)
- 7 Collegiate All-Americans
- 12 Conference Player of the Year
- 11 Division I Athletes
- 52 All-Conference Athletes
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