Get off the fence and get off your ass, take a stand, have a point of view. In the field of athletic development today there are many issues that need to be addressed. Many of you can offer solutions, please get active? Speak up, your point of view and opinion is valued. Don’t be a sheep blindly 
following the gurus and pretenders who are offering short cuts and quick fixes. Think, analyze and then stand up and be counted. Stand for something. You may be right or wrong, so what? I have never been afraid to stand up for what I believe in. Have I been wrong at times, you bet I have! I abhor the “mushy middle ground” if you want things to change then be the change you want to be. Speak up with words and actions. The field of Athletic Development needs to be defined – will you help define it and move past the madness that is called strength and conditioning? I hope you will join my colleagues and me in this effort to build a profession for professionals. You can’t do it sitting on the fence.
2 Comments
Josh
Great post Vern! This discussion is desperately needed, both for athletic development and for the general state of physical education.
As you frequently point out in this blog and elsewhere, athletic development includes strength and conditioning, but also includes a huge number of other factors.
How do we begin to categorize those factors and create a framework for shared discussion and continued growth of the field?
I like breaking things out into “functional components,” but that often leads to a list of separate skills to be trained. Recently I’ve been playing with the concept of “critical path” approaches – specifically where is the athlete lacking, and what is the critical piece needing to be developed? Still working on this, but would love to hear your specific ideas about how to organize and define athletic development.
Kyle
Had a new woman come to the gym, I was supposed to show her through a routine another trainer had written. She was a basketball player, quite athletic, past coaches had had her doing squats, deadlifts, powercleans, clean and jerk, etc.
I looked down at the card, it had leg press, medicine ball crunches and “dumbbell shoulder press – bosu”, which I’m not sure what it is.
“Do you feel this would be challenging for you?”
“No.”
“Would you prefer barbells?”
“Yes.”
So that’s what she got.
I am told by other trainers that women aren’t interested in lifting heavy stuff. Strange, then, that more than half the women I train are interested in lifting heavy stuff. It reminds me of what someone else said, the biggest problem women athletes face is the low expectations of their male coaches. At the very least, a woman athlete should be held to the standards of what she has already achieved.
This is where I take my stand – on the side of the person being trained.