“Force is the language of cells, and movement is what we say.”
Sport Performance Solutions for Athletes, Teams, and Organizations
The Challenge:
The world of sports and sport performance training has evolved significantly. It is now substantially more demanding then it ever was ten or twenty years ago. Athletes are playing/training more, doing harder skills, at higher repetitions, for longer hours, at younger ages, with the end result being exponentially more force being placed on their bodies. Although these advances are important for pushing the frontier of athletic development and performance, a vast majority of these athletes are very young kids or adolescents who are far from being fully developed, and who simply do not possess the structural tolerance and strength to handle the persistent forces of sometimes multiple sports, but worse, repetitive, single sport training. Likewise with adult populations participating in gruelling “weekend” sports or vigorous recreational activities after spending 40+ hours sitting at a desk. Regardless of the circumstances, adequate physical preparation is paramount, with motor control, structural tolerance, and strength residing at the top of the physical preparation priority list (or base layers [foundational building blocks] of the performance hierarchy), alongside technical development, mobility, and stability.
The main reason strength, technical proficiency, and motor control development are so crucial is because these qualities allow an athlete to produce, transfer, and absorb force more efficiently and effectively. Being able to handle high amounts of force and move easily into (and out of) particular positions and shapes is how elite athletes can perform incredible skills and optimize their safety, joint health, and injury risk over multiple years. Just think about how and why injuries (either acute or chronic/overuse) occur - the forces imposed on the body by the environment (external forces) are greater than the body’s ability to withstand/overcome those forces (ie. not enough internal force generating capacity).
The Solution:
By participating in a carefully designed physical preparation program (designed and monitored by a qualified movement professional), we can systematically teach the body to handle more force, prepare tissues for loading within a broad range of skills, postures, and positions (as well as sport-specific ones), and encourage proper movement mechanics as a method of injury prevention.
My objective, whether working with individual athletes, teams, or entire sport organizations, is to first ask the relevant and somewhat obvious questions [and carefully evaluate (ie. assess and test) the answers]:
Is your body physically prepared to do what you want it to do?
Does it move, bend, twist, flex, extend, absorb/generate force, and perform the way you hope it will on the field, court, course, or stage?
Is it optimally balanced to handle the loads, forces, motions, and insults that you ask it to handle on a day to day basis?
Is it recovering well between bouts of practice, training, or competitions, or is it responding in kind with pain, inflammation, stiffness, and dysfunction?
If the answers to these and other such questions are no, then I attempt to work with the athlete, team, or organization to develop effective strategies to implement quality sport performance training solutions, programming, and educational resources. See my Movement System page for my 3-Step Process.
Who I Work With:
Athletes of all ages and skill levels, helping to optimally prepare their bodies for the demands and challenges of their sport/activities.
Athletes, small groups, and teams in order to optimize their training protocols and maximize their health and performance.
Coaches and Sport Organizations involved in the development of athletes to assist in their physical education and training strategies.
How I Work With Athletes, Teams, and Organizations:
I provide comprehensive objective measures of an athletes' movement quality and capacity (see my Evaluation and Testing page).
Using a variety of training inputs based on scientific principles and research [such as Functional Range Conditioning (FRC®)], I am able to directly address and improve an athlete’s specific deficits (read more about FRC® here).
I design and monitor individualized athlete training programs, team training programs and periodized Yearly Training Plans for Organizations.
I facilitate a variety of educational, fun, and practical workshops for athletes, teams, and Organizations looking to understand and incorporate my movement system training philosophy, practices, and programs, optimize sport nutrition practices, or to learn the best goal-setting and “performing under pressure” solutions.