Are coaches holding back their athletes progress?
Coaches and instructors, especially those in the private sector, have gotten to be very competitive. They need athletes to make money — and the more winning athletes they have, the more money they make and the more they are considered to be successful.
However, I often wonder if mainly having more athletes isn’t the main reason for many sports academies and major training camps to be considered successful. The more athletes they have participating, the greater are the chances of getting a great athlete in the group.
Notice I did not say a greater chance of developing a great athlete because this is something that rarely occurs. The yardstick that most people use to measure success is how many great athletes came from a particular coach or sports training center.
Thus, the greater the number of athletes that participate in the program, the greater is the possible success that the coach/instructor may realize. What is very often overlooked is how good the instructor or organization is in developing great athletes.
Or, even how much improvement the athletes show after several months or years. We can find many examples of athletes who participate in a particular program for many years but never get past a particular level performance or competition.
To make sure that they have the athletes, the coaches/instructors have become very protective — they don’t want to “share” the athlete with others who have expertise in supporting areas. They appear to be afraid that these other professionals will take their athlete away them.
This of course can happen, but usually it is in overlapping areas of expertise and is thus understandable. But it is not understandable when it occurs in diverse areas of expertise. For example, I was scheduled to give a tennis clinic on quickness which included cutting actions and specialized strength and explosive exercises.
I don’t know of many — if any — tennis instructors/coaches who do this with individual biomechanical analyses of cutting actions, acceleration including the first step in acceleration, stopping and reversing actions, and lateral movement.
By having the player attend the clinic he/she would become a much better player. The player would become or have the potential to become, quicker, faster, stronger and more explosive. This in turn could make the coaches/instructors look even better!
Prior to the clinic, parents and athletes were excited about attending a clinic of this nature. They thought it would help improve player performance greatly. However, to keep the coach informed, they told him/her about attending. The bottom line, the coach or instructor would not allow the athletes to attend. As a result, there was no clinic.
The coaches/instructors “protected” their players even though they knew that I do not coach and do not work with athletes on a regular basis. I act mainly as a consultant who analyzes their technique, prescribes specific exercises to strengthen the muscles as they relate specifically to the technique and monitor the overall training program.
The reason most often given by the coaches/instructors for not allowing their players to attend the clinic was that the clinic would interfere with what was already taught to them. But they and even the players knew that the material I was to cover was not touched upon by the coach/instructor.
As a result of this attitude, the athletes did not get appreciably better in their physical abilities related to the speed, quickness and power that they exhibit in their playing. It appears that the coach’s philosophy maintains that the players only have keep on playing and hopefully, someday become a better player.
According to the coaches the supplementary training to improve their technical and physical abilities would interfere with their playing — even if the players became quicker, faster and more explosive. But yet, we know that this is the key to improved playing performance.
For more information on improving the physical qualities specific to tennis see the Explosive Tennis: The Forehand and Backhand CD and Build a Better Athlete.