Avoiding Injury

[anomander]

This is a long article about Stanford’s decline, but also about their S&C coach Shannon Turley who won 2 awards for top S&C coach. It tells how Stanford only minimized injuries under Turley in the early 2010’s focusing more on agility and stretching then bench numbers. He’s at Colorado now and left Stanford in 2017. These last couple teams have been decimated by injury. It’s just a small piece in a long article, but a long article that obviously needs to be addressed in our program and most importantly it CAN be addressed.

David Shaw’s end at Stanford: Lost identity, complacency derail a golden run

David Shaw announced his resignation Saturday after the Cardinal lost 35-26 to BYU. But where did it all go wrong?

theathletic.com

 

[dollarbill44]

There is a delicate balance that has to be worked when it comes to strength, mobility and recovery with athletes in order to optimize game performance. Focus too much on any aspect and you risk upsetting the whole cart. If you focus too much on strength, you run the risk of injuries during training or during games due to imbalances. If you spend too much effort on joint mobility, you risk having slower, weaker athletes. If you don't stress recovery enough, your athletes will burn out at various points so you get games where people get hurt or just don't have "it" during a big game.
The S&C coach has to manage all of these aspects. Equally important is managing the coaching staff and sometimes saying, " hey coach, we need to have a backoff week with training" even if they all look and feel fresh. Especially during the season. Performance doesn't, nor can it, improve linearly. And most players shouldnt be trying to improve their lifts during the season. You want your athletes to peak for the games and not the weight room. Weight room testing is important to gauge what's working and what isn't but it probably shouldn't be a focus. When you make it a focus, it becomes the most important thing for some guys and they work too much on their squats and benches and not enough on their rear delts and Romanian deadlifts and end up with knee and shoulder issues. You also don't want 155 lb safeties who train like they're in cirque de soleil.