Low Hanging Fruit

I spent the first decade of my coaching career believing that strength was the ultimate cure for just about everything and everyone in team sport.  Want to be a better player?  Strength train!  Want to get faster? Strength train!  Want to be more resilient?  Strength train!  Sooner or later, I realized if the answer to every problem was increasing squat, bench, and Olympic lift numbers, we’d have a world full of professional athletes.  Well, that certainly isn’t the case.

As I’ve aged my opinion has changed.  KPI anchors are very different among the developmental spectrum in team sport.  The fruit tree is a beautiful illustration of the importance from beginner to intermediate to master of sport regarding “what matters” and “what counts”. 

Don’t Confuse Low Hanging Fruit with a Bountiful Harvest

 For the beginner everything works.  Young Tommy who has never strength trained before has the adaptation reserve of an SUV on empty.  Proper movement efficiency coupled with strength training is a miracle drug.  Ground fruit is the food of choice.  This isn’t the case for a team sport athlete with a large training age making a living in sport.  The question we must ask is where to prioritize our time with the end goal of improving performance. The fruit that bears the best return is the middle, and difficult to reach fruit.  This comes at a physiological cost and affects programming.  In fact, I wrote an entire book on it called The Gain, Go, Grow Manual:  Programming for High Performance Hockey Players. This fruit is also the hardest to measure.  A feeling that brings great discomfort in the coaching profession. As my friend Fergus Connolly says: “start with the scoreboard and work backwards.” 

Skating, like playing the guitar is a skill.  None would say “take the entire summer off, strength train your fingers, and be prepared to play in front of a sold-out concert come August.”  Dexterity, rhythm, pace, progression, synchronization and chord mastery are all skills.  Perhaps the best place to practice these skills is also the most difficult to reach for?  As a young coach, I made the mistake of confusing low hanging fruit with a bountiful harvest. 

Not everything that can be counted, counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.  One of the many lessons I’ve learned in my coaching journey.  Choose your fruit wisely.