Goals of the Program

Goal #1: Reduce the Risk of Injury

If an athlete is tight, sore, fatigued, or banged up with pulled muscles, rolled ankles or tweaked backs their body will naturally protect itself from further injury by adjusting (limping, repositioning, etc) and slowing the motion down to the point it can stabilize the movement. This results in a loss of speed. When your underling philosophy is to empower your athlete to maximize their genetic potential for sport specific speed, and you continue to try and train heavy and hard through mild injuries you are not sticking to your philosophy. This is why, for improved performance as well as career longevity, you need to focus on REDUCING THE RISK OF INJURY!

The late, great Mel Siff stated several causes of injuries some of them are as follows:

1) Inadequate Warm Ups, Cool Downs, and Rest / Recovery Periods
2) Inefficient Movement Patterns (body gets out of position)
3) Limitations in Proprioceptive Awareness (slowed reaction to dangerous situation)
4) Unsafe use of Momentum (can accelerate, but cannot decelerate efficiently)

Before you begin training for speed you must first prepare the body. Al Vermeil has referred to training as building a pyramid. You start with a broad and stable foundation and build towards a tall and lasting peak. This is how a training program should be designed.

First prepare the body for the work that is to come. Through WARM UPS that not only increase the temperature and mobility, but also wire the body neuromuscularly (mind to movement) so that they are better prepared to perform the high speed, high proprioceptive movements asked of them in practice as well as in games. Time spent warming up can add up to over an hour per week of training time. If this hour is spent static stretching and jogging around the field, a valuable time period in their athletic development has been lost.

Second, you need to fine tune their movement. This is where I get picky! Every time an athlete moves incorrectly their body remembers this and stores that movement pattern in muscle memory. After several times, the body starts to react with this inefficient MOVEMENT PATTERN and it becomes a subconscious reaction, thus setting them up for injury. Istivan Javorek once said it’s like leaving tire tracks in the mud. If you fix them immediately you may never notice that they were there. If you leave them to dry they will be much harder to get rid of.

Third, you must institute proprioceptive type activities in all aspects of your program. You must teach the athletes how to react to a swiftly changing athletic environment with precision and timing. Drawing on all aspects of AWARENESS (timing, rhythm, prediction, anticipation, etc) and using the PROPRIOCEPTIVE skills taught in their training program, they will be able to anticipate situations and react subconsciously to any situation that might have caused them injury.

And finally, if your program is getting the athletes to move faster, you must first teach them how to slow down. Without a finely tuned neuromuscular system, flawless movement patterns, functionally stable muscles and joints, and the proprioception to fire the right muscles at the right time, you are always at a higher risk of injury as you become faster. It’s fairly simple actually; make sure the athletes are capable of handling the MOMENTUM that they are now able to generate.

In closing I would like to add, that if #1 Goal of the Program is to REDUCE THE RISK OF INJURY then a foundational approach to training is desperately needed. You will find that not only do your athletes get faster by doing this, but they will have set a foundation for the future. By planning more productive training sessions, and setting up a systematic, progressive developmental structure, our athletes and constantly being challenged on every level. The improved confidence, and esteem that comes from moving more efficiently is a nice benefit that emerges as we reduce the risk of injury.