When performing a movement, the importance is not just being physically able to perform the movement, but to have mechanics to perform the movement. To a spectator or a family member who is watching an athlete perform a movement, do not always realized the preparation that an athlete goes through during their life span to achieve the perfect movement. To someone looking outside in may feel in a day they can pick up the athletic movements quickly, which in reality takes many years of time and practice to achieve.
A movement as common as a sprint has many factors that affect the end result, where when beginning to learn sprinting mechanics in the lower half of your body, the best way is to start on the wall, by first feeling the weight being on the balls of their feet and the hips forward. With each progression as the quickness of the feet change the importance is to maintain posture. During the movement of the feet, it is more about the force in the ground, where the foot rebounds up. During this portion of learning an athlete will learn the importance of keeping the knee up and toes up or to be in dorsiflexion where the gastrocnemius maintains in a tight and contracted position. Any sprinter will have a great reliance on their upper body because this is the region of their body is what controls speed. The positioning of the arms with each movement should be cheek to cheek, from the head to the hips and remain in this position until the sprint has stopped. As the leaning process continues the upper body movement begins with an athlete on the ground where they are just moving their arms and they will progress to a movement such as two inch runs, where the feet move very quickly, but the arms are moving slowly. The last point of a sprint that is important to learn is how to properly decelerate, where the less steps the athlete makes to decelerate the better the better the cease of movement. The bodies positioning of deceleration movement is sit back in an athletic position and keeping the weight in the athletes heels, the goal to be great is to perform the deceleration in three steps to show the most control.
Posture is one of the most important aspects to display during any exercising movement because it is a key factor that shows an athlete has control. Posture holds is a way to determine and improve the stability of an athlete, where the goal is to have an athlete display control and steadiness on their body. Posture holds begin with an athlete standing with the feet shoulder width apart, with their hands together and the elbows down, where the key is for the athlete to stay low, which during further phases will progress to stagger feet, eyes closed, switching feet on the coaches command, to one athlete holding a physio ball as tight as they can to prevent another athlete from grabbing the ball. Through the various types of posture holds an athlete will learn to protect themselves to prevent vulnerability with such mechanisms as to not have a wide and open base. Once posture stability has been established, it makes movements easier when there is a change of direction because of their strong core from which the rest of the body is supported from. During change of direction it is important for an athlete to have the smoothest and quickest transitions and realize this only occurs after stability has been established. When an athlete changes direction, the planted foot from which they are changing direction needs to be in front of their center of gravity or basically ahead of the lagging foot.
Another important movement, once a stable core and base has been established is for an athlete to perform rotational movement. In the beginning process of learning rotational movement it is important for an athlete to learn weight shift, which can be done with a lateral squat with rotation. During the lateral squat it is important for an athlete to load the squatting leg on the inside ball of their foot, where they then perform the squat and get as low as they can without the knee passing their foot. Once the athlete sits up out of the squat, they should think about standing up tall then load the opposite foot and lateral squat on that side. Once the athlete has mastered the lateral squat with rotation, they are then ready to perform rotation movements, such as rotational row, which can be performed on a keiser machine. The athlete will stand perpendicular to the machine where they will have a staggered stance in an athletic position, where the loading is on inner inside ball of the foot closest to the machine. The pulley of the keiser will be in the hand farthest from the machine, where the hips will be positioned straight forward and the chest will be slightly turned into the machine. The athlete will then shift their weight to the outside foot, where the cord of the keiser will be wrapped around their hip furthest from the machine, where the athlete will come to a more upright position with the machine behind them.
The best cues when performing this movement is to drive their inside foot into the ground along with having that inside hand high five a coach as hard as they can about halfway between the distance of the starting and ending position. Tell an athlete to break a hand because that will get them to understand the force you are looking for as a coach. The best cues for this exercise is external cues. For me personally, where we were able to attempt this exercise the best cue was hitting one of the strength coaches hand as hard as I could along with driving my foot into the ground, which put shock to the coach’s face with the force I had, especially being an individual on the quieter side. The biggest lesson learned from this past week’s education was to see how movements can be benefited from the simple performance of a correct movement, where the stability of the core plays a huge role in assisting an athlete through the processes of many different actions.