This morning I’m back at the Rehab center working one-on-one with the athletes. I continue to get asked by both healthy and non-healthy athletes question about training and any exercises that will help them perform at the highest levels. I am passionate about helping athletes and consider it an honor to be able to help them.
Why the Chinese?
A lot of friends have asked me, “Why the Chinese?” First of all, the USA didn’t ask me to help them and obviously I would have jumped at the chance to work with our Olympic athletes, however, the US athletes are not trained like the Chinese. Let me explain: The Chinese athletes come and live at the training center from an early age. It is their job they eat, sleep and train. They do not work and only concentrate on the sport that they play. In the US, our athletes have their own team of doctors, trainers, massage therapists, and performance coaches that work only with them. Most are in college and have jobs and families and only come to the Olympic training center in Colorado Springs for six month’s prior to an Olympic games that they are competing in. The government pays the Chinese athletes and each of their families are given a stipend as compensation for their children to be taken away at an early age. I’m not here to discuss whether their government is right or wrong (I do have a strong opinion but will keep it to myself) but what I’m doing is no different than the scores of American teachers who I ran into that teach English at schools all over China. Ok, now you know!
Back to the training, I have had two swimmers and one weightlifter from the women’s team this morning and each athlete had her list of functional movements that she wanted to work on. All in all, it was a successful morning. Now, off to lunch in the training center where all the athletes eat their meals. Most of the food at their training table is closer to what I might eat at a Chinese restaurant, good but not great! One of the Chefs gave me a bag of fruit the first day and I have been living off it. The fruit in China is out of this world. They grow huge pears and the mandarin oranges are really, really good and sweet. They grow sweet watermelon and the cantaloupe taste like it’s grown in South Georgia.
This afternoon, I get to train the men’s volleyball team. I have two hours to train fourteen athletes. We start off by doing our dynamic warm-ups that consist of different types of movements. We do hops and skips and bounds and use this time to warm up the core.
The Cold Rubber Band
If you can imaging putting a rubber band in the refrigerator overnight and pulling it out in the morning and stretching it far, you know what happens. It will break,. However, if you start out by gradually stretching that rubber band over a few minutes that rubber band will heat up and you can stretch it twice the length and it will not break. It’s the same principle with the ballistic warm-up. We want the athlete to break a sweat before we start our training. The Chinese do a really good job of warming up; however today they will do my warm-up!
Next we are using the quick foot ladders as a training aid. Again, some of their athletes have used the ladders before. Today they will do my ladder routine. It’s amazing to be able to teach a new skill to a great athlete, generally it only takes one or two times to demonstrate the foot pattern before they pick it up. By now they are all in a full-bore sweat, which is exactly, what I wanted for the warm-up. I had set the gym up into four stations and broke the players up into four groups. Station number one was the reaction coach where we were training lateral reaction with resistance. One athlete is in the middle while being anchored by an athlete on both sides like a sandwich. The middle athlete would respond to a directional light and sound either right or left and when hearing the beep he would execute a set or bump movement. Both of these movements are used on the court. Station two was what we call moving up and backs. These drills consist of two athletes who have belts on, secured by a long double up cord between them. One of the athletes will go thru a series of movements followed by a movement done on the court. It would be a lateral bump both right and left. It would be a set to the front and it would be a jump serves. Station three was shackles and my punch belt. The movements that we trained were walking lunges, hi-knee marches, and step squat and set, backward diagonal bump, lateral shuffle and bump and set and skater jumps. Station four was a series of pattern-runs. I had set the cones up into a pattern of six cones with a progression of movements ranging from acceleration to deceleration all the while working on explosive change of direction.
I definitely think the moving up-backs were the hardest station and even had a couple of athletes that needed to stop and take a break. The coaches really liked the workout and so did the athletes. “Thumbs up” translates to GOOD WORK and I received quite a few “thumbs up” from both players and coaches.
We finished up the session with one of my partner stretches as a cool down; again they enjoyed the new way to stretch and gave me the “thumbs up. “ I really enjoyed this session and see why the volleyball team is so good. Great athletes!
While I was training the volleyball team, the men’s weightlifting coach came and asked me if I wanted to come and watch their team competition tonight to determine who was going to be on the team for the London games. I can’t tell you how excited I was to get the chance to watch this competition. Out of all the sports that I have worked with, weightlifting is by far my favorite. I had been the competition manager for weightlifting during the 96 Olympic games in Atlanta and had studied at the world famous Soviet Sports Institute in Moscow in 1987 where I lived and study with all the great Russian lifters. The Chinese won eight Gold Medals in the 2008 Beijing games and have pretty much dominated the world in weightlifting after the fall of the Berlin wall. To be up close and personal with so many great champions was truly a treat for me. I was not allowed to video the event but I took two hundred photos and have poured over them looking at their technique.
I witnessed their super heavy weight lift 245 kilo’s in the clean and jerk or in laymen’s term’s 539 lbs. He stopped after that lift so I’m not sure how much he might have lifted. I guess I will have to wait until the 2012 Olympic games.
Tonight topped off an outstanding day of training and one I won’t forget for a long time! By the way did I mention it was 98 degrees and the humidly was 95%? I feel right at home, being from Georgia!
Good Night!
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