Yesterday when I was swimming I
got this profound thought. Before I share the thought let me tell you what I
think triggered it. I have been preparing for the GAIN Apprentorship which
begins next Thursday, that coupled with my with my visit with Nort Thornton
last week had me looking over some old material from my first several years of
coaching and some material from college (1964-68). The thought is that function
and functional training was what we all did before we knew any better, before
we got smart. Programs were balanced and trained all components and biomotor
abilities. We used the body, climbing ropes, pull-ups, push-ups, stairs, Indian
clubs, stall bars and medicine balls. Why did we get away from this? Why,
because of technology and the reductionism of scientific studies quoted out of
context. We got more “scientific” and less pedagogically sound. We stopped training
teachers and coaches; we eliminated true physical education and became too
worried about the kids self esteem. We moved to Universal Gyms and then Nautilus
because they were easier and “safer” to use. I am certainly not anti science,
but sports science evolved out of physical education, now you have a generation
of sport scientists who grew up in the lab and never were trained first as
physical educators, so many of them don’t want to get their hands dirty. Go
back and look at Franklin Henry’s research on sprinting done at Cal Berkeley,
look at Benke’s work on body comp, those dudes got down and dirty. Look at Pavo
Komi who cut open his Achilles tendon and put a force transducer on his Achilles
to study forces in vivo or Dave Costill who was a subject in many of his
studies. Why have we moved away from that? In sport we have gotten excessively
specialized. Forty years ago coaches coached more than one sport. We need more
generalists who can understand the big picture. To me that is why we have
gotten less functional, we have become too narrow, too focused, to the point where
we cannot see the forest for the tress. No doubt we need to understand
function, which I maintain that we do understand it. We just need to broaden
our vistas, open our eyes. Watch kids play that is functional training. No
inhibitions, big amplitude movements, hopping, jumping, twisting and turning.
2 Comments
Craig Duncan
Hi Vern you always make so much sense and I agree. Even though my background is in sport science I always wondered why the people teaching us new little about sport and the reality of working in a sporting context. The day to day stuff of working with athletes and making the science applied is what it is all about. You make it sound like it is not rocket science and you are right. I also agree re research and how it is quoted out of context and how much of the published work in sport science has pretty poor research methodology and with such methodology would not be published in more stringent fields. Thanks Vern for always making me think bigger.
Joe P.
I just got through the first chapter of Spark: exercise and the brain, and was surprised the author advocates a technology heavy P.E. program. Makes you think you can’t exercise without treadmills, stationary bikes, video dance machines, and you can’t even run without a heart monitor! One teacher “brags” 65 percent of his students can’t do a pullup. Sadly, there are new P.E. teachers just out of college who have been taught that way. Read Vern’s athletic development book and appreciate it’s multicultural approach. Because I know if I tried that where I work the Columbian kids would use the bikes for soccer goals and the girls would use the treadmills as salsa platforms.