_white.png){kind=small}
Hi Everyone! Your virtual coach - Greg - here! I will be your head coach for the next few weeks and will be talking to you about my experiences in the industry, but also comparing those behaviours to the science. Being a strong believer in a 'Hands-Off Training Policy' has forced me to look at educational models in a completely new way from the classical viewpoint in the industry. More on that later!
One thing I would like to say as we ‘Take-Off,’ is that many times I see coaches and athletes warming up their body, but forgetting to warm up their brains as well. It is still very common to go to a gym and see the same training program and same warm up program posted on the walls. Athletes do a warm up like a routine in-itself. This means the athlete’s body is getting warm, but they are not usually engaged in the activity.
Advertisers will say that you can show a customer your logo, but unless they are engaged enough from an emotional perspective, they will never actually ‘buy.’ If you want your athletes to ‘buy’ your training concepts you learn that day, try making sure you start with the brain and warm up the body and techniques SECOND after a fun and UNIQUE warm up.
“The results indicated that after completing the mental warmup, participants rated themselves as more ready to perform, more ready to use psychological skills, more ready in terms of thoughts, body, and feelings, and more mentally warmed up overall.”
~Judy L. Van Raalte Et al. (2019)
Athletes, when you go into training next time, do something completely NEW for your warm up. Set up a #GRTchallenge of some sort where you try to accomplish some low intensity skill. Do not huck quints, but why not try to do a flip and catch a stuffed animal? Why not try to Swivel Hips with 1.5 twists instead of just half? Build a cool fort and try to smash it down with flying Kung Fu kicks off the trampoline into a pit.
All of these are examples of what athletes can do to engage the brain, but have fun at the same time. Training should ALWAYS start on a good note and end on a good note. So, next training try something like this with yourself or your team and worry about the techniques later when the brain is actually ‘on’ to be able to process the complex technical cues.
Comments