500 Words a Week - What can S&C learn from Jurassic Park?

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

This mainly relates to piling on extra work for our athletes. I think a mark of a good S&C coach is their ability to get the maximum adaptation/ performance out of their athletes with as little input as possible. Extra work should be agreed upon by both you and the athlete. I understand that certain extra work athletes won’t like doing, but we see value to it, such as extra body composition sessions. If the goal and method is agreed upon by player and coach this will make things run smoother. However, in line with that, we should implement the easiest option for the maximum output. Rather than intense HIIT intervals, performing a block of 10-20mins in heart rate Z2 using non-impact activities should get the job done. Along with increasing calorie expenditure, this type of session may help with recovery and the athlete may experience further central adaptations.

This also relates to implementing advanced training methods too early in an athlete’s career, robbing them further down the line when they may need it most.  

You can’t conform everyone to your perceived wishes.

The reason Jurassic park turned out how it did, is that a certain group of people tried to conform reality to their preconceived ideas about how certain beings (dinosaurs) should act. Hammond and his team wanted the dinosaurs to look and act real, but also wanted to exert total control on their natural instincts.  How often do we try to do this in our coaching roles? We have preconceived ideas about how our athletes should act and work, and when they don’t act in line with our ideas, we begin to label them with disheartening statements such as “bad attitude”.

You can’t control everything.

Hammond tried to have every aspect of Jurassic Park controlled, once the control failed, everything went downhill. I believe that accepting we can’t control everything leads to a greater increase in job satisfaction as coaches. Relinquishing some control and placing more responsibility on our athletes leads to a more productive environment. My best experiences with S&C have been with coaches who enable their athletes to just crack on. They are a presence in the gym, will lead the movement prep, but once the main work begins, athletes need to know how to go about it themselves. Especially in academy football, where players might not make it at their current club, or they will move onto another club. We never know the extent of support our athletes will get in the future. If they are used to you holding their hands through the entire process, it will be a rude awakening for them once they move to another club where they haven’t that level of support. Enable and educate your athletes to look after themselves.