Function over form

A lot of young male athletes have a vision of something like this in their minds when they train. How this equates to any sport I have yet to see. Speaking to a Coach last week, he thinks that it is an easy way to avoid personal responsibility for a loss. Instead of saying I lost because I didn’t make a tackle or I lost because I didn’t read the opponent properly it is easier to say I lost because my opponent was bigger. This fixation on size and bodybuilding type training programmes is endemic.

Running a Level 1 S&C course at a University recently, Sports Science undergraduates couldn’t wait to tell me that their super sets of hypertrophy and sitting down exercises were the way forward for sporting success. I am not sure what they are teaching at universities nowadays, but critical thinking does not appear to be part of the process. When I questioned what they did and how it related to the actual requirements of their sport- they just came up with answers about how everyone else does those type of training programmes, so it must be right.

Ah- the young keen minds who challenge authority or exisiting thinking- where have you gone? Now we have mindless clones who are just repeating mistakes passed down to them from their peers and learning from magazines who are funded by advertising from nutrition supplement companies.