Our Perspective
Our Opinion of Athletic Development
Our opinion on athletic development and training comes from over 10 years of experience as a player, coach, and trainer for over 200 athletes.
The training industry has evolved immensely in those 10 years and has changed athletes mindsets on what is important and how should we properly prepare for a sport?
The biggest transformation we have seen in training is the adoption of thinking of the body as a thinking, connective system; counter to the body builder approach that looks at muscles individually independent from one another. A pain in the hip may be from a weakness in the ankle. Pain in the knee may be from a weakness in the thoracic spine. This is an important discovery because we are finding that athletes are more susceptible to injury if they are building poor equilibrium of muscle tissue. More weight does not always equal more athletic success especially if an athlete is not working full range of motion. A lack of mobility can drastically hinder an athletes speed, agility, coordination, and even worse, cause season ending injuries.
If a sport puts an athlete in a position that his/her body is not mobile enough to control in that position, unless they are very talented and compensate , they will most likely get hurt. Even then, the best athletes compensating for poor movement leads to tightness, inability to articulate joints, mechanical dysfunctions, injuries, and long term pain after their careers.
Athletes must train to be strong, mobile, dynamic, aware, and resilient.
The word that describes this phenomenon of connective tissue all working together in one harmonious body is “tensegrity”. Think about tensegrity as a balance between tension and integrity. A body with great tensegrity has all the tension in the right places; in turn creating healthy flexion and mobility of joints. A body that is too tense in some areas and not tense enough in others has poor tensegrity and therefore poor mobility and inadequate joint function. Inadequate joint function leads to injuries. It is vital for athletes to be mobile and be able to move well just as much as it is to be powerful.