SKILLS Training...

I recently attended a really great strength and conditioning program here in Baltimore that was put on by Perform Better. Some of my very favorite speakers were presenting. Lee Burton, Mike Boyle, Todd Durkin and Alwyn Cosgrove. These guys are leaders in the industry and it's always great to learn something new and just get out and see a mass of other trainers. The one thing that all great presenters seem to have is an acronym.

So, the very next morning, while I was driving to coach swim practice, I thought, "I want an acronym...!" I started rifling through words and in within a few the word skills came to me. What could I do with this group of letters....? Hmmm, well the coffee must have kicked in at that moment and I came up with the following.

S-K-I-L-L-S....

S- for swimming, that is what I was going to coach but since I work with athletes from different sports, "S" can stand for sports.

K- Nobody was able to guess this. Kid. Be a kid, we all need to be a kid again. Maybe a part of me never stopped being a kid. Kids usually just jump into things like trying a new athletic move, exercise or sport technique without hesitation. Luckily they have not yet become self-conscious and do not bother worrying about how they look even if they don't do it right the first few times. This is a beautiful thing.

I- Intensity! We need to have a fun intensity about what we do and we need an intensity component in our training!

L- Love, hopefully we love what we do, simple as that. I tell all my athletes that I don't care if they are the worst in the world at their chosen sport or activity. If they love to do it, that is as good a reason to continue as any. In fact, I'd rather see someone do a sport that the suck at if they love it rather than listen to people say they just do it because they are good at it....

L- Laugh, in my opinion we need to laugh freely. Most importantly, we need to be able to laugh at ourselves. It is a sign of strength if we can laugh at ourselves. I don't like it when people take themselves too seriously.

S- So long. Find a completion point and say so long to your session. Mission complete, congratulations, be happy with your achievement, time for evaluation when we have completed our training or season. Now it's time to move on and say so long and put our experience in storage bank and build on it for future endeavors.

Hope you enjoy this. It's always great to have SKILLS!

Be good,

Coach Dave