Author: Vernon Gambetta
The Gambetta method – Systematic Athletic Development Principle Three
Systematic Athletic Development Principle Three – Train fundamental movement skills before sport specific skills Effective athletic development is based upon the principle of the development of fundamental movement skill before specific sport skill. Today athletes at all levels are lacking fundamental movement skills. They are a product of a society that has become more and more sedentary. There is no longer mandatory physical education to provide a foundation of movement skills. There is less free play and more organized sport activity. The net effect of all of this is a significant decline in fundamental movement skills. Although I cannot prove it I do speculate that this is a contributing to the alarming rise of injuries we see in sport today. A sound athletic development program is founded on the basic locomotor skills developed to their highest level. These fundamental skills must be incorporated into the athlete’s daily training program regardless of the level of development. As the athletes progresses in training age and skill development fundamental skills should assume proportionally less of the training time. However I do find it ironic that in my work with elite athletes that I still must spend a good portion of their training on fundamental movements because they never acquired these skills as part of their foundation. Instead they specialized early and refined their specific sport skills. Fundamental movement skills fall into three broad categories: 1) Locomotor skills as the name implies are the skills that get us from place to place. It encompasses the spectrum of the gait cycle from walking, to running, to sprinting. It also includes swimming in order to move in the aquatic medium. In its most rudimentary forms it includes crawling. 2) Stability skills are those movements executed with minimal or no movement of the base of support. Balance is a key element. It is an important foundation of many sports skills especially those encompassing finer motor patterns. 3) Manipulative skills. This is simply control of objects with the hands or the feet. The application to sport skill is obvious. In our society the emphasis in manipulative skill is on work with the hands to the exclusion of the feet. This is a deficiency that must be addressed in a sports development program. Throwing and striking skills fall into this category. Better awareness and use of the lower extremities will pay rich dividends. In order to effectively transfer (translate) the broad movement categories into refined movement patterns we need movement awareness. Movement awareness consists of those abilities necessary to conceptualize and formulate an effective response to sensory information necessary to perform a desired task or motor skill. This is FUNdamental work. It should be fun and mental in that it requires concentration. In order to train the components of movement awareness it is best to create an environment where the athlete is given a task orientation. This means that the athlete is given movement problems to solve that will enable them to discover movement skills in a “play like” environment. “… one goal of functional training is to practice movements in order to make them automatic. Second, even though accomplished athletes may have little idea of what they focus on during skill execution, at some conscious or subconscious level they are focusing on relevant cues. For this reason, Singer et al advocated that skilled motor performance could be best achieved if learners adopt a non-awareness type strategy. Non-awareness refers to a lack of attention placed on the activity while it is in progress, but learners are instructed to preplan the movement and focus on a specific situational cue. “ (Ives and Shelley p180) Non-awareness means having the athlete focus on solving a particular movement task rather than focusing on how they should move “correctly.” Movement is natural; by making it conscious there is a high risk of making it robotic. Most of movement awareness activities can be addressed daily as part of structured warm-up. Structured in the sense that the thought and planning should be put into the sequence and timing of the activities, not the step-by-step orchestration or choreographing of the movement. The later would defeat the purpose. The goal is to create an environment where the athlete can cultivate as rich a repertoire of motor skills to draw upon as a foundation for specific sport skill. ”Rigorously defining proper form and the use of mechanical stabilization and anti cheating aids excessively constrain athletes exploration and problem solving movements, and bear little resemblance to what occurs in athletic performance.” (Ives and Shelley p182) The components of movement awareness are: Body Awareness – this consists of an awareness of the whole body and the relationship to its parts. A key to body awareness is awareness of center. The relationship of hips to feet (base of support) and hips to shoulders as well as eye to hand and eye to foot coordination. Crucial to all movement and an integral part of body awareness is opposition. In gait it is the arms swinging in opposition to the legs. It is not something we should have to think about, but it is something we can train and take advantage of. Spatial Awareness – this is awareness of the position(s) our body occupies in space. It is a sense of where you are in your environment. On the court or on the field it is sensing where you are in relation to the other people around you, even though they may not be in your direct sight. It is also a sense of where you are in tumbling, falling, and acrobatic skills that allows you to control your body. Rhythmic Awareness – our fundamental rhythm is the heart beat, all our bodily rhythms are derived from that. Sport movements are rhythmic in nature. This is highly related to music and dance. Movement is just a series of synchronous and asynchronous rhythms linked together. Directional Awareness – this has two components: laterality and directionality. Laterality is awareness of both sides of the body. Directionality is a sense of where we are going, forward, back, right, left, up and down. Effectively being able to move in all directions is a prerequisite for effective skill development. Vestibular Awareness – this is the information based on feedback from the vestibular apparatus located in the inner ear that provides information about the body’s relationship to gravity. It is closely related to balance and body awareness. The vestibular sense provides two key inputs: the position of the head in relation to the ground and the direction of movement in space. Mabel Todd summarizes the physiology quite well: “However the result is accomplished, the fact is well established that the otoliths and semicircular canals are the seat of impressions of position and direction of motion in space; and they are combined in the brain with the kinesthetic sensations of movement, weight pressure, and relative position, coming from other parts of the body, to give us our minute-to-minute information as to the movements of our limbs, neck and trunk, where we are at any given moment, and how we can get somewhere else.” (Todd, page 28) Visual Awareness – vision is a dominant factor in motor skill. Some experts have estimated that as high as 80% of all information we perceive is derived from visual feedback. Vision is closely tied to spatial awareness. It is the sense that modulates or regulates the other senses. This is a quality that is very trainable. It is also a quality that if taken away by simply closing the eyes can be used to heighten awareness. Temporal Awareness – this is a sense of timing. This awareness is crucial for performance where there are time constraints or a sense of pace is required. Auditory Awareness – this is the ability to discriminate, interpret, and associate auditory stimuli. For smooth efficient movement auditory awareness must be highly developed. Hearing allows us to get feedback as to the rhythm of movements. Something as simple as the sound of a foot strike in running is tremendous feedback to both the coach and the athlete. Tactile Awareness – This is a sense of feel and touch. There is a tendency to think of this as only the hands, but feel and touch with the feet is also very important. The whole body is a giant sense organ, so try to get away from thinking of tactile awareness as the exclusive domain of the hands. Ultimately, what links this into a complete functional program is proprioception. Proprioception is awareness of joint position derived from feedback in the sense receptors in the joints, ligaments, tendons, and muscles. It is a highly trainable quality. It is almost too simple. We must strive to constantly change proprioceptive demand throughout the training program. In fact this variable should be manipulated more frequently than change in exercise mode or change of exercise because it adapts so rapidly. References Ives, Jeffrey C. and Shelley, Greg A. “Psychophysics in Functional Strength and Training: Review and Implementation Framework.” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. Vol. 17 #1 pp 177 -186 Todd, Mabel E. The Thinking Body. Princeton Book Company Publishers. Highston, NJ. 1937
September 11, 2001
It is almost impossible to find words to express the feelings that the tenth anniversary of this honorific event evoke for me. Sadness, sorrow, sympathy come to mind and so much more. I pray for all those who died that day and in the wars that followed. I pray that those precious lives have not been lost in vain. I just hope that we can reignite the feeling of national unity and resolve that followed this event and encourage our leaders to lead again.
Techno Babble
How do you coach? Are you a complexifier that speaks in techno babble that no one can understand? Or are you a simplifier? Can you use metaphor and paint simple word pictures that evoke action. I don’t know about you but I am into simplification. Sport performance is tough enough without making it more complex. The great coaches I know don’t try to make it complicated, if anything they work to make simple and then even simpler still. If you are working on balance then say so. Don’t call it tonification of the central nervous system. You may be impressed with you intelligence but I am not. Techno babble helps no one – BEWARE! Coaching is about results, you get results by taking the complex and making it simple.
Si Se’ Puede
Si se’ puede is an expression in Spanish that literally translated means yes you can. It has been a favorite expression of mine for years. All to often in coaching and in life we tend to focus on what can’t be done, the problems and the weaknesses. I prefer to focus on the possibility, what can be done. What are the strengths of athlete? Find and build on those strengths. Minimize the weaknesses, certainly acknowledge the weaknesses or deficiencies but don’t allow yourself to be consumed by them. There is no doubt that success breed’s success. Build on what you can do – si se” puede.
The Road to Rome
There certainly are many roads to Rome. Some are fast and direct and other slower and more scenic. Regardless of the route you select you will probably get to Rome eventually. But we must consider how much time you have to get there and how much time you will you be at your destination. Is it a one-day shopping spree or a two-week excursion? You obviously should plan accordingly. To arrive on time it is helpful to have a current road map, access to road conditions, locations of gas stations, restaurants and rest stops. Too many unscheduled stops and detours will make you late to the destination so chose the route carefully. Preparing an athlete for their journey to the final destination whether it is a high school state championship, a national collegiate meet, a world championship or an Olympic games is a journey. The destination is known and clear. If you have never been there before find someone who has been on the journey to help guide you, it will make the trip much easier. You can select a proven methodology that has stood the test of time or you can follow training fads that look cool but lead to dead ends and detours that do not advance you toward the destination. Your choice, there are three places on the podium, many are called but few choose. What route will you choose? Will you be there on time and ready to compete?
The Time Element
It seems no matter what we do there is never enough time, but is that really the case? Lets take a slightly different perspective, from a coaching standpoint in terms of developing the athlete you do have time. You just need to know how to optimize the time you have. To develop an athlete takes time, it is a process that cannot be hurried. Adaptation takes time. Systematically taking the time to allow the adaptations to take place either in training or technique will be longer lasting and in some cases permanent. Crash programs don't yeild permanent solutions, the ineveitably crash. You can’t force it, the other element of time is timing – when you do what you do. If there is a secret in regard to time it is timing. All the great coaches I have been around have a finely honed sense of timing. They know what to do when. They know what to say and what not say at the correct time. Time zones are the other element of time. The three time zones are: the past, the present and future. We cannot afford to live in the past; we must learn from and gain guidance and direction by looking back, much like the rower in a single skull who looks back to gain perspective to go forward. The present time zone is where we work, live and play. That is where will get results so it is important to be fully present and there all the time. The future is just that the future, we can control the future by what we do here and now not by trying to get it to come sooner. There are no shortcuts, if you do try to take shortcuts you will quickly come to a dead end have to go back anyway. So to make time your friend, slow down and let the body’s wisdom take effect. Rome was not built in a day!
Evolution of Strength Training – My Personal Journey – Part Three
In the mid 1970’s Arthur Jones invented a new machine system designed around an elliptical cam. The Nautilus system was based on accentuated eccentric loading and one set to failure. It was not that these were the first machines, but they were the first machines that were marketed with a training system and philosophy to back them up. Nautilus centers sprang up all around the country. Several high profile pro football teams and prominent collegiate programs adapted the system. It appealed to the American mentality of instant gratification. It was hard work, it hurt, and the workout was over in twenty to thirty minutes. In addition because of the eccentric emphasis it was possible to gain hypertrophy rather quickly, which appealed to American football. Things began to change rapidly with the advent of the full-time professional “Strength Coach.” In the seventies few colleges had strength coaches and if they did most of their attention was centered on football. In professional sport there were few fulltime strength coaches. In 1976 Bob Ward, who was the track coach at Fullerton College in California, was hired by the Dallas Cowboys. He had a full time year around program that was backed by management so that the player’s had to comply. This was a game changer. It was the exception, not the norm. Superior talent and genetics continued to prevail even into the late 1980’s. Not all the teams in professional football had fulltime strength and conditioning coaches. The advent of the strength coach in college and professional sport was like a good news bad news joke. The good news was that now there would be someone who whose sole responsibility was to condition the athletes. The bad news was that was that with the exception of those who had a track and field background they seldom got out of the weight room. In the mid eighties the research of Garhammer, Stone and O’Bryant on the periodization of strength training represented a significant breakthrough. Their work quickly became the accepted norm and in many circle sis still practiced today. It was a model that I quickly found out that it worked for someone just starting a strength program, but once they used the model once it required modification. The fallacy here was that strength was periodized independent of the other physical qualities. Strength is one quality that must be integrated with all other qualities. In 1985 I began my foray into professional sports with the Chicago White Sox and the Bulls as an assistant to Al Vermeil. Once again the same old myths and misconceptions which I thought had been forgotten reared their ugly head. You would have thought that by 1985 with the success that athletes had enjoyed world wide with a comprehensive conditioning program that the coaches and athletes would have been embraced this training as an opportunity to better themselves. I think since that there had been little emphasis on training in professional basketball and baseball the attitude on the part of the coaches was let them play, those who are talented will succeed and those who are not will fall by the wayside. I kept hearing that Basketball and baseball was different. Don’t lift heavy because it will hurt your shooting or impair your throwing and hitting. The White Sox trainer told me that pitchers should not lift overhead because it would hurt their shoulder. When I stated that didn’t they lift their arm overhead when they pitched I was told I didn’t understand the game. In 1987 I took over as Director of Conditioning for the Chicago White Sox. It was an opportunity to put together a systematic comprehensive program in professional sport. No one in professional baseball had a systematic year around program. In order to make it work I decided that we needed to make the program more specific to the demands of the sport of baseball. It needed to include more work on balance and proprioception and significantly more work on rotation. In my search for new methods and concepts I was influenced by Dr. Lois Klatt, head of the Human performance Lab at Concordia University in River Forest, Illinois and the book Total Body Training Bob Gajda and Robert Dominguez. I gradually moved away from weight training to the concept of strength training. Weight training is one method of strength training, in order to train a complete athlete it is necessary to utilize all methods available to achieve the desired goal. What evolved was a functional strength training program that was adapted to the multi-plane demands of the sport of baseball as well as the unique demands of the specific positions. The program was based on biomechanical analysis so that the movements we were training were specific. Pitchers had a specific program; catchers had a specific program, rather than one program for all. All these programs had all components linked so that what was done with speed and agility training was related to balance and proprioception work which in turn was related to the strength training work. My goal with the White Sox was to create a model that would work in any sport. I was lucky to be able to use the resources available to work toward accomplishing this task. We were able to achieve good results with the White Sox both in terms of measurable improvements of speed and power as well as significant reduction of injuries. In 1987 I had the opportunity to attend the European Athletic Coaches Association Conference in France. At that conference I was introduce to the concepts of strength and power development of a French sport scientist, Gilles Cometti. He had a big influence on the design of the strength training of the three time world champions Swiss Shot Putter Werner Gunthor. His methods involved combinations of slow and fast eccentric work. Isometric holds for as long as sixty sends and ballistic explosive work. I applied these ideas with good results, but still was not quite sure where it all fit in the system. In the nineties I continued to refine the ideas and concepts I had learned over the previous twenty years. Another piece of the puzzle was a research article published in 1993 by Wilson, Greg J., Newton, Robert U., Murphy, Aaron J. and Humphries, Brendan J. “The optimal training load for the development of dynamic athletic performance.” Medicine And Science In Sports And Exercise Vol. 23 pp. 1279-1286. I think article in many ways closed the circle for me. It answered some questions and raised some other questions. It is interesting to note as we supposedly gained more knowledge and sophistication in the field I began to see more monkey see, monkey do syndrome. If it is good for them and they just won the national championship then it must be good for us. There is a prevalent attitude that the greatest testament for a piece of equipment or a particular training method is the affirmation of winning. What I have seen through my experience is that success is often achieved in spite of, not because of the training and that superior talent and genetics oftentimes prevail. A good sound training program is not based on equipment or personalities, but on sound scientific training principles. We need to consider what is really high tech? A machine for every body part with everything connected to a computer is not the answer. What is more high tech – the machine or the body? I have come to the realization that the body is the ultimate high tech machine. The farther away we get from the body the less specific the training. Where are we going? What have we learned? The key is the ability to apply the strength to the sport or in your event. That is what Sam Cunningham was trying to tell me in my first year of coaching. Just because he could not lift more weight that is not what is most important. The ability to recruit and fire the muscles in a coordinated pattern is what is most important. Strength training is about neural drive; it is training the command and control system. That is why it is so important to train movements not muscles! I now define strength training as coordination training with appropriate resistance to handle bodyweight, project an implement, resist gravity and optimize ground reaction forces. It demands training across the whole spectrum of strength and power depending on training age, physical maturation, gender and time of the training year. It involves a variety of methods systematically applied starting with the ability to handle and control bodyweight against gravity. This is where we have to go in order to progress to do a better job of integrating strength training, making it specific in order to develop athleticism. After forty years the journey continues. I believe it will always be a work a work in progress.
Evolution of Strength Training – My Personal Journey – Part Two
After graduating from Fresno State I went to University of California Santa Barbara for my teaching certification. While there I was fortunate to take a class from Sherman Button on conditioning athletes. It was his first year at UCSB, he was ahead of his time with the material and concepts that he presented. It was a great class because of his comprehensive approach to conditioning built around weight training. The two textbooks for the class were especially helpful. Pat Oshea’s book “Scientific Principles and Methods of Strength Training.” and “Foundations of Conditioning” by Falls, Walls and Logan. As a class assignment we had to design a yearlong comprehensive training program for our chosen sports. I put together a program for track and field that incorporated all components of training. It was an initial attempt at periodization, but most importantly it forced me to look at weight training in a new light. I had to integrate the strength training with the skill and conditioning requirements of each event. Today that does not seem like anything special but in 1969 that was revolutionary. I was also now a coach as well as an athlete. I was responsible for other people. I had to teach them skill and have them ready for competition, so I had to pay attention to the big picture. Strength was only one part of the equation, although a most important part. That spring, in my first track coaching assignment, I got the opportunity to coach one of the best athletes I have ever coached, Sam Cunningham. He became California State Champion in the Shot put that year and also an All American football running back. He was 6’3” tall, weighed 225, he could run the 100 in 9.7, but by my thinking he was “weak, “ because he could not lift much weight in the weight room. Yet he had tremendous explosive power. This led me to begin to ask the question: How much strength is enough? A question I would continue to ask throughout my career. In the fall of 1969 I began training for the decathlon. I did all my strength training with Curt Harper, a world class discus thrower. Working with Curt we trained on a varied program that involved Olympic lifting and power lifting. I got very strong in terms of measureable strength in the weight room. The only problem was that the work in the weight room was not transferring into performance on the track and in the field. Once again I begin to question the whole place that weight training had in the program. Three things led me to modify my approach 1) The writing of Ken Dougherty in his books Modern Track and Field and Track and Field Omnibook, especially the latter. In these book he talked about concepts that would latter evolve into my thinking on special and specific strength. 2) Training for the decathlon in Santa Barbara gave me the opportunity to train with some of the greatest athletes in the world. I saw how they trained. Watching and getting to know the foreign athletes that trained there also gave me first hand exposure to the European methods of training that up until that point I had only read about. This exposure to the Europeans let me to question the traditional approach that we were taking. They seemed to spend less time in the weight room, when they did come to the weight room they were not as “strong” as we were, but they seemed to be able to do a better job of expressing their strength. They engaged in more varied activities like jumping and all types of throws. 3) In the fall of 1971 Pat Matzdorf, from University of Wisconsin, moved to Santa Barbara to train. He had broken the world record in the high jump that previous summer. His strength training was different. Bill Perrin, the track coach at Wisconsin, and a real innovator designed his program. It involved what they called simulation training, which consisted of specific strength training exercises that worked on various parts of the whole jump using a variety of methods including weights and rubber tubing. He also utilized depth jumps in his training. This was my first exposure to a systematic application of plyometric training. From 1969 to 1973 I coached at La Cumbre Junior high school in Santa Barbara, California. It was first hand experience working with growth & development in the pre-pubescent and pubescent male athlete. There was not much equipment, even free weights. The strength program consisted primarily of push-ups, pull-ups, dips, rope climb and gymnastics. At this age, with the tremendous linear growth that was occurring body weight exercises were very appropriate loading. I felt that we the key objective was to lay a base of athletic fitness that they could harness when they went to high school. Although at the time I felt somewhat shortchanged that we did not have more weights, in retrospect I was on the right track. Another key milestone in the evolution of my ideas on training in general and strength training in particular was the1972 AAU Learn by Doing track & field clinic in Sacramento, California. Many of the top track & filed coaches in the country were in attendance. The opportunity to interact with them was invaluable. Two of the “Learn by Doing” stations were devoted to plyometric training which was new and revolutionary at the time. Each evening there were presentations by Polish triple jump coach Tadeusz Starzynski, he presented the whole spectrum of his training program for triple jumpers which had produced Joseph Schmidt, three time Olympic Gold medallist. It obviously involved a lot of jumping exercises, but it included medicine ball work and some very specific weight training. Once again there was nowhere near the extent of weight training we were having our athletes do and the weight training that was done was much more specific. This experience had profound influence on how I trained my athletes for explosive power from that time on. I immediately incorporated his concepts and ideas in my personal training, as well as with the athletes I was coaching. The results were a tremendous increase in explosiveness and speed. In 1973-74 while attending graduate school at Stanford University I also had the opportunity to coach the jumpers and decathletes. This gave the opportunity to apply what I had learned with more mature male athletes. It was also the opportunity to work with Payton Jordan, the track coach at Stanford who was a pioneer in weight training. He had worked with a man named John Jesse who authored many books on strength training for sport. Jesse was way ahead of his time in the application of strength training to prevention and rehabilitation of injuries. Doctor Wesley Ruff, my adviser, encouraged me to do research in the area of strength and power training, which I found very helpful. This helped me to better understand the scientific reasons for the things that I was observing as a coach and experiencing as an athlete. In my research I discovered an article in by Yuri Verkhoshansky on the use of jumping in training. He delineated the different training effects of short jumps and long jumps. This article had a profound effect on my own training and with the athletes I coached. Now there was a system and a context for the Plyometric work. In 1975 –77 at Santa Barbara high school was my first experience working with female athletes. I did not make distinctions as to gender, they were athletes. They strength trained with the boys. In fact we learned that the girl’s derived even more spectacular benefits than the boys and that they needed to continue their strength training throughout the season or the drop off would be dramatic. The strength training was an important part of the program regardless of the event. Before the late 1970’s there did not seem to be the distinctions between all the styles of lifting. You just put together an eclectic program, you were not labeled a free weight guy, an Olympic lifting guy or a HIT guy, you just trained athletes. Two things changed this: 1) Olympic lifting ascendancy in the late 1970s which I believe resulted from the spectacular gains made by the Bulgarian weight lifters. The Bulgarian methods were thoroughly detailed by Carl Miller in his book “Olympic Lifting Training Manual.” The Olympic lifting movements had always played a major role in weight training for improving sport performance, but things seemed to change in the late seventies. There was an attempt to blindly copy Olympic lifting training protocols without any apparent regard to it’s relationship to the whole training program. Just because an Olympic lifter, who does nothing but lift, is able to lift up to five times a day does not mean that a football player or a basketball player who has to run and jump and do other training should attempt multiple lifting sessions in a day. Olympic lifting for sport performance is a means to an end. If you are an Olympic weight lifter then it is as end in itself, because those lifts are the performance standard. For a while I bought into the focus on Olympic lifting, but then I took a step back and looked at the big picture. I was not coaching Olympic lifters; I was coaching track and field athletes in a university setting who had limited amount to train. I had to use an eclectic system of strength training that would give me the most bang for the buck. Around 1979 in the course of doing some biomechanical of my runner at Shriner’s Hospital in San Francisco I met a physical therapist that practiced the classical concepts of PNF (Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation) as taught by the originators of the concept Knott and Voss and Dr. Kabat. This really opened my eyes. She talked about PNF and diagonal rotational movement. I was not quite sure what to do with it, but it got me thinking and analyzing what we were doing. Everything was too linear, so I begin to rethink what I was doing in strength training. It started the evolution in my thinking away from traditional methodology to less traditional multi-plane work. It led me to look for other forms of resistance, to in essence get out from under the Olympic bar and broaden the approach to strength training.