This was
in Seth Godin’s blog today; he calls it the Houdini Technique:
Make easy things look
difficult.
Make difficult things
look easy.
This is exactly what the training gurus do. They take
simple things and make them complex and take very difficult movement skills and
trivialize them. It continues to amaze me how people keep buying into this
rubbish. Training the athlete is a straight forward process. It is based on
principles of adaptation and sound pedagogy. You cannot force adaptation, nor
can you make the body do things it is not ready to whether the limitation is
from growth and development or training age. Everything takes time. My mantra
has always been simplicity yields complexity. The human body has an inherent
wisdom. As coaches, therapists and trainers we must learn to tap into that wisdom.
Training is not magic, it is not smoke and mirrors. It is sound, directed work with
a purpose that is designed to fit the individual athlete. Ask yourself if the
athletes you are coaching are surviving or thriving?
Bonnie
Question: How do you motivate athletes to continue practicing simple things? In my experience they quickly get bored with simple movements, even though they haven’t mastered them. How do you get them to understand that they haven’t mastered the basics? How do you motivate them to keep working on them?