We always ask every athlete the same question- what are your goals? What do you want to achieve this off-season that will drive performance enhancement on the field? This sets the stage for understanding why athletes come to us and how we can relate everything we do from a health and performance enhancement standpoint to their goals. Today I want to demonstrate how we break down long-term goals into short-term manageable goals by reverse engineering the process.
Every baseball player wants to improve their throwing velocity and exit velocity. The first step is to always evaluate where they are from a performance standpoint so we have an understanding of where we need to go and how we are going to get there.
Let’s say for example a sophomore baseball player with no training experience wants to throw 90 MPH by their senior year of high school. Their current throwing velocity is 70 MPH and they have two years to increase their velocity by 20 MPH to achieve their end goal. On paper, an increase in 20 MPH seems like a lot. When you break it down over the course of two years, we want to see an average increase of 10 MPH per year, 5 MPH every 6 months. Much less intimidating and more manageable when the long-term goal is broken down into yearly, monthly, weekly, and daily goals.
Everything we do from a strength and conditioning standpoint needs to be related to the athletes goals and how it goes to help them achieve their goals. Everything from mobility, movement quality, speed, strength, power, agility, conditioning, and recovery will play a role in an athletes ability to achieve their goals and be successful on the playing field. Every piece of the training process will play a role in their ability to stay healthy, enhance performance, and stay in the game for the long-haul.
