Day 4 - Virtual Coaching 3/19/2020
Good morning coaches and athletes!
Today is "Day 4" of this unprecedented season of firsts and I couldn't be prouder of everyone banding together to do their best in the face of adversity.
High school athletes are logging into our plans here in SP. Coaches are emailing me about interest in hosting some competitions this summer. Collegiate athletes are reaching out for assistance because they don't want to waste a day while away from their team.
It's awe-inspiring and amazing to be a part of something so much larger than one school/district/team/etc.
Today's plans:
Today is another X-Factor day.
Athletes are asked to perform numerous plyometric movements, watch video to strengthen the mind, and to work on strength and conditioning through Train Heroic.
The plyometric routine that I posted on Monday is the same one for today's practice. Along with those though, our sprint coaches wanted to include A skips, B skips, bounding into a sprint, assisted pogos, assisted pogos - lateral focus, and toe pops for height. As well, they gave an agility workout to polish movements and athleticism.
X-Factor days are all about building ATHLETES. Running at high speeds is one thing, but spending time during the track and field season to build athletes in other aspects of sport (agility, explosive strength, etc.) was something teams of the past NEVER did. The addition of X-Factor to our team (a few years ago) has been game changing!
As far as the video work...
Many have found it foolish to watch video in an attempt to better their skills. I can promise you from countless hours of research that this may potentially be the most important part of your training during this time. Soak up as many long and triple jump visuals as possible! The mind is an amazing thing. Even if you lose some strength during this time, your brain can find a way in which to make up for that with better technique/movements that could result in similar performances and potentially personal bests.
Coaches should be preaching video work and athletes should be actively searching out as many visuals as possible.
Lastly, thank you to those that reached out showing interest in creating some kind of summer jumps/track competition series that would give our athletes the chance to compete. There has been no discussion about cancelling the entire season, but just in case, I feel this is a great step for us to be taking!
So proud of the Long & Triple community!!!
Until tomorrow my friends...
Coach Ewing