Social Media is a wonderful tool.
When used right.
You and I can look at videos of and read 1st hand accounts from athletes and coaches we admire.
Which is awesome.
What is particularly awesome, from my perspective is the message that every top level athlete out there participates in some form of strength and conditioning training. Every one of them is doing "fitness" to support their sport.
But what we are exposed to on the social, isn't the fundamental boring day in day out stuff, not usually. What we see is the cool shit.
We see snippets, micro clips of their training. Maybe the last couple of reps of the last set or the final minutes of a conditioning set.
But we don't see the whole picture.
We essentially miss the forest for the trees.
This was highlighted to me by a young athlete asking me questions the other day.
Should I be doing this, should I be doing that. I saw such and such doing these things...
My immediate answer was "Ask me these questions this time next year"
He understood.
"Am I not ready for that yet?"
Not yet kid.
Simply because he hadn't yet built his foundations. Time hasn't been but in at the rock face laying that baseline down.
Where he needs to be is at the unsexy, non insta worthy boring basics.
Learn the lifts, learn to positions, learn to brace, learn when not to brace, develop scapula control, shore up imbalances developed from his sport training.
He doesn't need alactic interval sessions or extensive plyo metrics He needs to Push, pull, hinge, squat The sport training takes care of most of his aerobic needs, so he needs strength, muscle mass and motor control.
I gave him a very simple program, much simpler than the one he was just starting from another trainer. I don't know if he'll follow it, but he got the idea that he needs to build this foundation layer. I did pull out a program for him to look that does have all the sports sciency sexy insatgram stuff on it. A plan for a top ranked fighter I worked with for a few years. The plan was a 12 week block periodised program that we put her through leading up to a big international competition. The plan had a super basic first 4 weeks. The first block was almost dull. Deadlift, Press, Squat, Core.
Basics, basics, basics.
Then the second block introduced more energy system focused training, finishing with the final peaking block. I talked the kid through and it you could see his understanding fall into place.
The point I'm trying to drive home here, is that the basics or rather, the fundamentals are there for a reason.
Must you be able to squat 1.5 x BW before doing plyos? Not necessarily, but we can very much assume that if you are able to squat that weight, your body can tolerate the loads from plyometrics without too much trouble. And even an top level athlete who is doing all the cool shit you want to be emulating will cycle that stuff in and out, just as they cycle the boring basics in and out.
Social media is great. I love it. But it doesn't show the big picture. Just the highlight reel. Now I've been looking through the training plans I have available on my TrainHeroic site.
The plan there that fits what I'm talking about is the Bootcamp, assuming you have gym access. But I have other plans that I've not added there as yet. But they are coming.... Here's a look at whats there for those of you who simply want the WG-Fit programming without the coaching: https://marketplace.trainheroic.com/search?text=Wild%20Geese&type=teams%20and%20programss
Chat soon
Dave Hedges www.WG-Fit.com www.DaveHedges.net