Sports Performance Perspective: Competent Lifters
As sports performance coaches, our mission is to completely prepare our athletes for success in their sport(s). More often than not, that sport exists outside the realm of weightlifting. It’s very important for our athletes to execute lifts in a way that will enhance their development as an athlete, but they don’t necessarily have to be an expert. We are looking for our athletes to achieve competency in the weight room.
Carolina Panthers strength coach Joe Kenn classifies lifters as competitive, competent or corrosive. On this spectrum, our goal is to build competent lifters. Kenn says it pretty well:
“I want competent lifters who are competitive athletes, not competitive lifters who are competent athletes.”
Obtaining Competency: The KISS Principle
We have all most likely ran across some version of the KISS principle: Keep it Simple S____. Have your own fun filling in the blank. What’s important is: Keeping It Simple. That is how we can obtain weight room competency from our athletes. It is the best shot at keeping us from being distracted by flashy workouts that miss the mark. Even more, we increase the chances for fun and enjoyment through hard work!
Incorporate core lifts which are easy to teach in a short amount of time. This provides you the most work capacity. Use progressions to movements that do not require coaching cues to drastically change. Here is an example of a squat progression we use at Performance Course:
- Pillar Squat
- Squat to Box
- Counter-balance Squat
- Goblet Squat
- Free Hand Front Squat
- Front Squat
- Back Squat
At each level seen above, the coaching cues barely change from Exercises 1 to 7. At any athletic developmental level an athlete fits into one of the seven. If an athlete cannot perform with competency at a given Squat exercise, regress them up the pattern to gain just that.
This way, we are getting great execution, prevention from unnecessary injury and still achieving the crucial squat movement pattern that benefits the athlete. Regressing them to the correct level provides optimal nervous system response, confidence in movement, corrective muscular adaptations and most importantly confidence in THEMSELVES. It is amazing that if an athlete is regressed to the correct exercise choice at the beginning a training cycle, how quickly they progress to the next.
How Perfection Becomes the Enemy
Our passion is the weight room. So, to see athletes succeed within that coaching domain, is a real pleasure. For instance, few things in the weight room are better than a heavy squat, perfectly executed, or a power clean max achieved with a flawless catch. We would love every athlete we see to master the core lifts of the program!
Yet, passion cannot supersede the duty that we have to prepare our athletes as best we can for their highest level of performance in their sport. We all must check our egos as strength coaches.
We don’t need perfection in the weight room because our athletes are striving for that on the field or court. Perfection there, is much sweeter. Plus, it is 9 times out of 10, what the athlete desires. The role of a strength coach is to help the athlete get what they need from training so they can achieve their athletic goals.
If we can meet or exceed their needs from training, then we have done our job that day. What they need in the weight room is competency. While weight room mastery is exciting for us, accomplishment in competition is the goal! As a coach, check your ego at the door and aim for competency from your athletes, not perfection.
