nap
August 23, 2010, 6:47pm
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Not that I’m disagreeing with you at all but the understimation can also go the other way.
I’ve gotten into discussions with parents and athletes (more when I was coaching high school) regarding what I did vs. "I paid for (their kid) to work with a speed trainer/personal trainer/sports specific trainer etc. and they are going to get them stronger and faster. It’s going to be really good (implying that what I’ve done is not in some cases) because they are going to be doing a “speed development program”. Wow, I say, I’ve never though about that as I was planning on making your kid slower and weaker but that sounds like a good idea! In so many words, I actually did say this once-I had had enough.
I’d then get around to the details of this great program of development and find out it’s almost solely intensive tempo with NO actual speed work done. This complemented with a great strength progam consisting of such staples as flyes, leg extensions, leg press, lots of calf raises, curls, kickbacks, etc. you get the picture. You view this program and find there are really no progressions, planning etc.
Then you proceed to explain and trying to hold back a bit on ripping it so as to show it’s not about making it personal, how deficient this “program” was.
You can see on message boards when any one of a number of team’s CFB players have not performed particularly well at the combine and/or pro days. Fans say: “I don’t understand what happened to player A as he had been doing speed training”. They make such statements without any regard to what that’s supposed to look like. They simply don’t know the difference between one program or another and the people on this board would see major differences, problems instantly.
In the case of the private coach, the assumption by the parents was that the self-proclaimed professional specialist in sports specific training who even (gasp!) had a certification to his name would going to turn the kid into an Olympian overnight-okay I am exaggerating the Olympian part. To this I pointed out that I too have a number of certification none of which, in the grand scheme of things, proves anything.
In the end, both of us compete against this kind of “trainer”. One who has an aerobics instructor cert. so naturally that means they are qualified to train athletes.
Those are great points - we train 120 hockey players over the summer in small groups. The most important part of the program is the information sessions we have with the atheltes and parents. Last year we had maybe 20 kids commiting to inseason maintanance program all year. This year before we even begin our inseason mainanence we have 40 athletes signed up. This is directly due to the education process we have begun with our athletes and their parents!