Program versus application — BASC | Strength & Conditioning

Take home message

program for theIR application.

For Coaches

Maximise your application to teaching and coaching. Not your complication to programming.

For Athletes

Boring programs may not get the likes on Instagram. Just results. Follow the process.

Currently I am enjoying the experience of working across a wide spectrum of athlete - junior to senior. What I am noticing is that the same simple program structure can apply equally. I declutter the program so they can maximise their application.

For junior athletes, almost any stimulus invokes an adaptation. Whether it be technical or physical, adolescent athletes tend to get better. Part of that is developmental maturity and a small part may be the program (let’s not get carried away with how great our training program is. It won’t beat puberty!). I think what is critical with the junior athlete is the environment. Somehow, we need to capture and hold their attention with fundamentals as part of their long-term development. Capturing attention can be hard in the age of social media. So many “experts” with the latest drill, exercise or tech bombarding young athletes. I have found, that by having a simple program format, developing athletes are able to process and understand it quicker which allows me more time to engage in teaching and encouraging. Adolescents can be a little more shy to try and learn from failure, so for them, is is sometimes safer to not try sometimes. Part of your coaching role is to create a safe environment, to allow trying (and learning) which is easier to do with routine and program structure. The adolescent body changes so much day-to-day (physically, mentally, emotionally), that there has to remain some consistency for adaptation and progress.

With my senior athletes, almost the same simple program format applies. Routine and structure enable focus in a different way. Experienced athletes are often trying to raise the bar, to progress every session. To do so, they look for areas of improvement. Here, the time saved in the simple program is reinvested in application - tweaking loads, trying alternative remedial exercises, allowing them to substitute core or warm-up exercises (which drives engagement). Once again, the time to educate through an uncluttered format allows them the ability to process and understand. Whilst athletes may have once delegated responsibility of strength and conditioning to a more experienced coach, part of our coaching journey is to restore that ownership to the person to whom it truely matters - the athlete. Making programs intricate and complex may keep me in a job, but I am not sure it is in the best interests of the athlete.

As a younger coach, program sophistication was part of the cycle of development as a coach. I needed to show that I was trying to improve and make the best programs I knew. It was also a way to show off what I knew and in order to gain the confidence of the athlete because I “clearly” knew a lot. Now I realise it is not how much I know (which some would ague is still not much) but how much the athlete gains from me that matters. It is how much they grow that is the measure of a coach, not my programming ability.

Keep it simple to maximise your application of teaching and coaching.

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Thanks again. BA.