Every week I have conversations with parents and coaches about programming/training modalities. Coaches see one of our athletes excel on the field and they immediately need the program that made them that way.
Makes sense right?
If I run my kids through the exact same program, we will see the exact same results.
What they are missing is the coaching aspect of weight training.
We see this phenomenon in all sports.
An assistant coach leaves one program to be the head skip at another. They institute a lot of the same tangibles that were at their previous program. But…sometimes they do not get the same results.
We see this in the strength and conditioning field as well. Coaches move quite often in their early careers but results vary across the board.
Why is this?
It could be the talent pool at the school/professional sports team. It could be the budget that a coach has to work with. Or it could be the personalities preventing a good “buy” in.
I do not think it is any of those things…I think it boils down to the ability of the coach.
If Mike Krzyzewski left Duke in his prime and went to a less prestigious school, that team would be far better off in two years than if they had any run of the mill coach.
This is the same in strength and conditioning. Far too often do we look at the program for answers. There has to be certain exercises put into a particular order that is going to give us great results.
While this is true, you need to learn how to program correctly, it is more about how the program is run/coached.
A great coach will teach, motivate and create a culture of accountability so they can get the best out of each and every athlete.
All of our programs are super simple. We want to jump higher, we jump more, we want to sprint faster, we do more sprints…if we want to get stronger, we lift weights. Pretty straightforward.
But, if you cannot cue up a squat correctly, or you cannot teach a hang clean or you cannot identify movement deficiencies, no matter what program you run, it will not be as effective as you want it to be.
Furthermore, if you do not motivate and create a culture for your athletes to train, your buy in is going to suffer. You need to be able to coach different exercises just as well as you are able to get the most out of each and every kid.
At the end of the day, a simple program put into the hand of a great coach will be far more successful than a complicated one run by a bad coach.
Your athletes will remember you for how you coached them. The lessons that they learned and the person that you are. They will not remember you for writing great periodized work.
Mike Boyle once wrote: “Coaches change lives. Programs don’t”.
That spreadsheet with numbers and exercises does not get the best out of your athletes. That is your job!
