The Preparation Season
The Preparation Season
Charone Williams, Georgia Southern University
Everyone has a plan! The old saying is that if you fail to plan then you’re planning to fail. This holds true for any and all athletic plans as well as life plans. Having a plan set in place, well thought out and with some previous proven success can and will definitely set you up for long term success in whatever area you plan for it in.
During this time of year, we are preparing our athletes for this upcoming seasons Competition which usually start in December/January. We plan to start training in August/September since the early bird gets the worm! It seems this is a time of year when everyone starts preparing for the upcoming year, so it takes that much more effort and makes it that much more important to come up with a great training plan for your athletes. Now of course, some will have athletes that are phenomenal no matter what they do, no matter how bad the plan and no matter how bad the coaching is…and trust me…there are plenty out there like this!
However, it’s our job not to focus on how good other athletes are, but to get our athletes to focus on how great they can become. My goal is always aiming for greatness! Nothing else will do, nothing else will satisfy me, nothing else will even come close to describing my life’s purpose…to become great is what I aim for and I encourage my athletes to do the same.
Since the overall purpose of the plan is to achieve greatness, we need something that models after great programs and has achieved great results. Since there is no one size fits all type of program out there and there’s more than one way to ‘skin a cat’, part of the plan needs to be putting together workouts that speak to and get the most out of each and every one of your athletes. Knowing which athletes respond to which exercises, recovery methods, strength training methods and special strength exercises is a big part of getting the most out of everyone you supervise. You have to know what motivates them!
Am I advocating putting different plans together for each and every one of your students? Absolutely not! Working in the setting we work in that would be very difficult to achieve and implement. Putting the athlete in the right training group, with the right partner, with the right coach could be all they truly need to execute the plan to its fullest extent, but that’s all part of what the plan is and knowing your athletes.
Most coaches plan for their athletes to run fast, jump far, jump high, score more points, kick more field goals, make more kills, make more saves, swim farther and faster, etc, etc, etc. That’s a great plan, but HOW are you going to achieve that? What’s the method behind the madness? How is the mad scientist going to lay out his/her plan? What does the plan consist of? And most importantly, what is the adjustment to the plan once reality slaps us in the face? Many never get to the HOW and WHY of things. ‘Why’ do we want the athlete to be and do better and ‘How’ are we going to help them achieve that are the two questions we must answer, in my opinion, to achieve the greatness we all seek after day in and day out.
My plan is simple: We are aiming for greatness, legendary status, having our names echoed throughout the ages of time! How are we going to do this? Simple: We are going to defeat the one person who always stands in our way everyday…the person in the mirror!
Continue in knowledge my friends!
Charone