Hierarchy of Athletic Development: Part 1

This week’s blog post is the first of a 4-part series examining the hierarchy of athletic development. With the announcement of RISE’s first of three off-season training camps for softball and baseball players starting on October 8, this blog will work to not only promote these camps, but will most importantly explain the rationales behind the structure of the RISE’s training periods.

As seen on here, I define “athleticism” with 6 S’s: Strength, Speed, Stamina, Suppleness, Skill, and Strategy. An athlete that can do all well across all 6 domains is someone we view as “wow, they’re really athletic.” In this blog post I’m going to discuss the importance of the foundational concept of the hierarchy of athletic development: Suppleness.

When I was a young professor at Northern Illinois University, I had the pleasure of working with then-strength coach, Eric Klein. I brought him into my class to guest lecture and he was emphasizing the importance of being able to move in all directions, across all basic human movement patterns (push, pull, hip hinge, squat, get-up, carry things). He talked about how then-head coach, Jerry Kill, would emphasize recruiting kids who could “bend,” because as Coach Kill put it: “if they can bend, they can’t break.”

Suppleness is exactly that: the ability to bend and deform with high ability with resisting breaking. In terms of training, we refer to that as “movement quality.” In athletic performance, the GOOD professionals have some sort of system in place to evaluate movement quality before starting an exercise program. How do you know what exercises to prescribe if you don’t have any idea on what they currently can/can’t do? I’ll save the specifics of how RISE accomplishes this for another blog post.

The one time I got to meet THE Charlie Weingroff at the 2015 NSCA National Conference in Disney World.

The Functional Movement Screen (FMS) is the most popular system used to measure one’s movement quality. The FMS is comprised of 7 bodyweight movements that allow a professional to identify the individual’s stability and mobility issues across 7 fundamental movement patterns: squat, step, lunge, reach, raise the legs, push, and crawl. World renown performance therapist, Charlie Weingroff put it best: the FMS is designed to see if the individual is able to place their joints in the right positions to adapt to the stress placed upon them through exercise. One with a higher movement quality (better FMS score) is better able to place their joints in the right positions for exercise, therefore better adaptation to the stresses properly, I.e. much better chance of them meeting their fitness/training goals. One with a lower FMS score is unable to do that.

Goal 1A of RISE’s first off-season training camp from October to November is to improve the movement quality of the youth athletes. Kids will be exposed to a wide range of exercises and will performing many repetitions of each in order to groove those motor patterns, which will eventually lead to a diverse portfolio of movements (see “physical literacy” here). Weights lifted will be light and reps will be high in order to improve Stamina (Goal 1B), as well as enhance suppleness. Any knowledgeable athletic performance coach will know that as soon as you incorporate heavier weights into a movement, you are making the brain “save” that motor pattern. The kids will be coached-up on proper movement technique to ensure they are performing the highest-quality reps as possible, from toe and foot position, to trunk positioning, BEFORE heavier loads are added.

So if you have someone lifting weights with poor form, the brain is pressing “COMMAND+S” (or “CTRL+S” for you PCers) on each repetition, creating a history of poor suppleness. At RISE, during this first off-season camp, weights lifted will be light in order to maximize quality of suppleness first, which then makes the youth athletes earn the right to lift heavier loads later on. The kids being able to move properly is a pre-requisite before letting ‘em rip with heavier loads in December to March (Camps 2 and 3). You have to learn your ABC’s before learning how to read and write full sentences……

Moving well is an underlying foundational training principle of RISE, so this off-season camp #1 will really emphasize suppleness and allow me to truly teach proper movements.

“First move well, then move often.” —Gray Cook— (physical therapist and co-founder of the FMS)

Spots are still open for Off-Season Camp #1, starting Tuesday, October 8th. More information can be found here.