Ok, at this point any of my athletes/fellow coaches who know me, know that I have an all encompassing man-crush on Bruce Lee. Allow me to preface this entry with a bit of back-story regarding Bruce and I and how I feel he changed my life/opened my mind.
Bruce was a classically trained martial artist in the style of Wing-Chung Gung-Fu. He learned from Yip-Man, still a legend in the world of martial arts, and was incredibly adept in his technique. Fast forward to his early life in the USA. Bruce never stepped away from what he learned from his Gung-Fu background, but still adapted the technique and fighting style to make it his own, which is how he 'created' Jeet Kun Do. I put 'created' in quotes because Jeet Kun Do is made to be adapted to each individual martial artist. One of his famous quotes is...
"Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own"
Or also the very famous "Be Like Water" quote.
This statement and other writings of his opened my mind as both an athlete and coach. When I graduated from college I weighed upwards of 280lbs and was tired of being a lazy, un-athletic oaf and using the excuse of "oh, I'm a shot putter" to explain why I weighed so much. Using Bruce Lee's texts, and catering a training regime to my own style as well as strengths and weaknesses I went from close to 280 in July to 187lbs the following April all the while gaining strength. I owe a lot to Bruce Lee's writings and his own research some 40 years before I even implemented his ideas on fitness, nutrition and just clean living. To borrow another quote, this time from Isaac Newton, I stood 'on the shoulders of giants' and my education as a coach had begun.
Ok fast forward to the whole purpose of this blog entry, regarding the close-mindedness that is still rampant throughout the coaching/athletic community. Any of you who know myself, or any of my colleges through East Coast Gold, or track and field coaches I am friendly with know how open the coaches are to discuss their training ideas, coaching philosophies and just basic program design method. It is an awesome community to be a part of, and I've learned just as much (if not more) from these conversations as I have through any of my certification courses, lectures or conventions.
As a result, I've learned to be very open and generous with my time and knowledge as a coach, especially with strength and conditioning. However, when I ask questions regarding a teams program design when they ask for advice on their workouts, the reply that I still detest to this day is "well, we've been doing this program for 15 years now so we'll be sticking with that". Keep in mind, this frustration has nothing at all to do with the workout itself, rather the rigidity and apathy that is used for the reason of it's implementation. More often then not, these workouts are the same workouts the particular coach used themselves when they were an athlete, then they simply copy and paste, and dispense to their new athletes. It's basically Amway or Quixtar with workouts rather than groceries.
As a bit of background, strength training for sports has not been around all too long when you think about it. The workouts started as mostly hypertrophy/bodybuilding workouts and grew from there. Sadly, some coaches never evolved their workouts past hypertrophy. I've noticed that I have encouraged and ended many a blog post asking coaches and athletes to educate themselves further but, yep, I'm going to do it again. If I had not (and did not still continue to) educate myself, I would be 280lbs still and a very ineffective coach. Any of my coaching buddies reading this entry know, from first hand experience, how many of their brains I pick when writing workouts for an upcoming season, especially if I am going to try new things with a particular group. My first college coaching gig was in 2005 and I wish I had the lifting workouts I wrote from back then. For athletes in season it contained things like 4 different versions of a press, along with cleans at sets of 8 and 2 forms of squats all in the same day. I didn't know any better. However what I DID know was that I wanted to constantly improve.
A day doesn't go by that I don't look back with regret at that the athletes I coached early in my career and wish I could work with them now. I was a loud mouthed, arrogant, uneducated coach, who made up for his insecurities by displaying anger. However, I was at least able to understand my short comings and evolve my programs from there. I'm currently working on workouts for Summer/Fall for athletes and looking into last years program for any things I feel can be improved. So next time you are trusted with the task of coaching young athletes and designing programs, take the time to research, not only training methods you aren't well versed in, but also each individual athlete. And once your research is complete adjust your workouts to fit whatever mold you have. In other words, 'Be Like Water'.
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