The Small Things For Big Wins
James O’Sullivan is a current mentee on the group IPD mentorship programme with Collaborate Sports. As a young coach, we discussed the value in sharing insights learned early in his career for others who are at similar stages of their careers. Much of what we see/read online is excellent application from extremely experienced coaches, but there is so much great stuff going on at the entry stage of the industry too with coaches starting out in their careers! This article does a great job of showing how you have to think outside the box often when starting out in a career in strength & conditioning. Great job James, thanks you for sharing!
Strength and conditioning within a school environment is where I have started my journey. I do not think I could have picked a better place to start my career.
It offers many challenges across a large range of situations. The challenges can mount up at rate faster than I can cope with them, which means it’s crucial that I always come prepared to tackle every session with high quality.
Preparation. This comes in many different forms, such as having progressions/regressions in my head, knowing the program “like the back of my hand” and why it is structured the way it is, as well as showing up with the right attitude for that session.
“Bit by bit, getting the “little” things in order, amounts to creating habits as a coach returning big gains and positive outcomes.
In acknowledgement of getting it wrong in the past, and seeing the value of being prepared, here are six small things that can lead to big wins within school-based S&C:
Micro-dosing:
Planning micro-dosing into your programs is a great way to get a large volume of work with a large group over the course of a season.
Within my coaching I micro-dose max velocity work twice a week with my developmental athletes - by completing 4 sprints per session from various stances/positions, they develop a bank of movement solutions from which to pick from down the line in their sport.
Following on from speed work, I only recently realised I micro-dose with the strength work I programme, indirectly too. In our warm ups, patterns such as the lunge and squat pattern are completed as a staple set of exercises. For those athletes situated on the more basic side of the movement competency spectrum, these patterns completed with body-weight can serve to act as a submaximal strength stimulus. Five squats and five lunges each side just twice a week, over 52 weeks amounts to 520 reps + of a stimulus that could be hugely beneficial for many athletes!
Warm ups as “monitoring”:
The groups I work with are circa 25-35 athletes in size, meaning organisation takes huge importance in the session plan. With this in mind, I focus on ensuring the athletes go through the warm up together, followed by completing specific movements (Squats, lunges) and plyometric type together too. By doing this, it means I can manage the flow of traffic through “lines of work” or work around the room myself, as a ways to assess movement of tasks, without officially announcing that a “screen” is taking place.
“For me, warm ups are a great monitoring tools to tell me how an athlete feels. Is an athlete who is usually so competent through range, struggling with execution today? If so, I ask why is this? Is it due to DOMS, injury, stress? It provides an opportunity for me to engage in a conversation based on what I am seeing, versus what I would expect to see.
Use Fun For Multiple Benefits (at the right time):
There are various trains of thought with regards to the “correct” approach to coaching but I believe that sessions with young athletes (in particular) need to be really enjoyable and have an element of fun to it. In chasing this I always implement a game at the end of a warm up, such as a reaction-based game or an evasion drill. As well as getting the energy levels raised pre-lifting, it serves as an opportunity for often neglected skills to be trained. However, more so, it carries over well to intent and desire to apply better effort in the subsequent lifting session.
Foster autonomy:
From my experiences, athletes are much more engaged with a program if they are given the opportunity to self-organise and choose certain things. One way I provide this is by letting them choose the music for each session and place the responsibility on them to rotate this task around the group for the season. Other ways autonomy can be fostered is by allowing them to choose an exercise from a pre-selected list. This isn’t relinquishing responsibility, but creating collaboration with an athlete, which is important for a level of trust and rapport. Because I am prescribing a list of exercises that will provide the same stimulus I require (e.g back squat versus front squat), I am happy to give up control of the choice, to empower the athlete to commit to something they have chosen. Its win win for me.
Promote self-efficacy:
A player confident in his or her ability is a powerful thing. Even though it can be hard to have everyone feel their best when there’s such varying abilities in the group, one way to help athletes improve self efficacy is by implementing med-ball exercises. I’ve found that nearly all athletes can do these reasonably well and it works wonders in proving to an athletes that they are strong, powerful and explosive.
Drive challenge:
As previously alluded to, challenges to overcome are frequent as a S&C coach when working with developing athletes in large groups, so I look to turn this challenge to my athletes too. By creating challenges to overcome, I can prime the nervous system, create focus in athletes, and drive intent, as well as creating a competitive atmosphere in the group. You can also use to challenge problem solving in a group (a constraints led obstacle course for example). Using competitions to see who can create the highest jump, or furthest med ball throw, or the quickest reaction. Every young athlete I’ve been involved with seems to enjoy these challenges and it allows them to drive each other on and form bonds that are often overlooked when we think purely about program design.
Summary:
Working with a large groups of developmental athletes at such an early stage of your career can be tough, but my message here is to focus on implementing many little things can lead to larger gains over time. Picking a few small things to implement over time is more preferable than aiming to implement many things at once, in a similar vein to developing athlete’s qualities over time rather than in a condensed period. These solutions are often the things we don’t get taught as we learn the essentials within strength and conditioning, so I hope this helps coaches who are in a similar stage of their career as me.