When it comes to handling our athletes, I’m always trying to find a better way to tie everything together. I want to be able to better answer the question “What is the governing principle?” Overall development, getting them more comfortable and confident with movement, physical literacy, sensory development, systems development. These are all different aspects that we incorporate, and while they all play an integral part within the approach, I kept feeling like there was something that was missing; it felt like there was underlying structure missing. I’ve been spending that past couple weeks trying to look at training with different lenses, and I think I’ve come up with a good way to describe what it is that I’m after in regards to that governing principle.
Input vs Output
When it comes to the overall training session, I’m starting to view it in the context of where it falls along the Input/Output Continuum. This continuum essentially just states where the measure of the focus lies.
The closer we get over to the input side, the more I am giving the athlete. By this I mean, the more I am manipulating factors that will challenge how the athlete internalizes and processes the session. This is going to favor more of a sensory challenge than physical.
The closer we get over to the output side, the more I am focused on what the athlete is giving me. Here the measure of the outcome becomes more important. This is where the more traditional ideas of training fall. Training for strength, hypertrophy, speed, or power would be located on this side of the continuum. Or simply put, output-driven sessions favor more of the athlete’s expression of traits.
While all sessions will fall somewhere along this continuum, there are instances where I want to favor one side over the other.
Youth Athletes/Beginner Athletes
With our youth athletes, I am going to program their training to be driven more by input than output. I want to widen their foundation as much as possible during this stage of their training. When looking at the different stages of development, input-driven sessions are going to provide much more benefit long-term than focusing on the external outcomes for our youth athletes. I want them to learn how to feel movement. I want them to learn what movement feels like on different surfaces and in different contexts. I want to them to learn how to coordinate movement based off different types of information they are receiving. I want them to learn how to use conscious and unconscious feedback to regulate their movements and positions. By challenging the information that they are receiving, we can better develop them for when they will later need to express that response.
Along with youth athletes, I am also going to lean more towards the input side with beginner athletes. Even if they are older in years, that doesn’t make up for a young training age. If an athlete has never had formal training before (or never even stepped into the weight room!) then my approach is going to be geared more towards providing opportunities to interpret different information with regards to movement. As with our youth athletes, I want newer athletes to learn how to feel different movements, positions, and ways to load the body before we begin actually loading them up. An athlete who understands how to use his/her body will be much better at expressing physical traits than one who doesn’t know how to move.
Advanced Athletes
As athletes become more proficient in movement, interpreting different stimuli, and providing appropriate responses, their training will shift towards a more output-driven approach. Now that an athlete understands how to appropriately load the body, I want them to become better at the physical side. Now we can become more concerned with the outcome. What do they need to better express their athletic traits? Are they getting stronger, faster, more explosive? Do they need to put on more muscle? This is where we can begin to answer these questions and let the training approach provide the solution.
This is just a general oversight, but I feel that using this context helps me to provide a structure to then get more detailed within. Being able to define the governing principle behind the training then allows me to better cater some of the non-programmables, such as cueing. Two athletes could perform the same exercise or drill, but I might cue it differently to drive more input or output. By labeling the type of training with this context, it allows everything else to fall in place to provide a better experience for the athlete.
My Thoughts on Training 