To the misguided parents and coaches:
Why does your athlete need a strength and conditioning coach? Those of you who know me personally know I have a lot of strengths, but I have a lot of weaknesses. Weakness #1 – I am a terrible salesperson. So guess what? I am going to challenge myself and work on that weakness right now. These are the top 7 reasons why you need me and Bobby’s services at 1RM Performance:
1.) Odds are, your athlete is going to get hurt at some point in their career. A great way to prevent or decrease the time away from a sport is by working with a qualified strength and conditioning coach. As parent, you have the ability to decide how long this injury will set your athlete back. Choice #1: you can take a proactive approach and have your athlete working with 1RM to prevent injuries. Choice #2: you can have your athlete playing excessive amounts of games and wait for injury to occur. We would advise taking Choice #1 so you can improve your athlete’s performance while decreasing risk of an injury!
2.) Your kid may throw harder and hit farther then all the other kids in his grade right now, but that won’t last. He has either hit a growth spurt earlier than others his age, or he picks up quick on skills. At some point, the other kids will catch up and he will not have his size advantage. Either way he is a perfect candidate to train with us. And if your middle-schooler is 20 lbs overweight and hitting bombs now, but can’t play the field because he is too slow, his career will be short lived. That kind of kid has so much potential, but if he doesn’t work with the right coaches he will make it a few years in high school and then fizzle out. Let us teach him how to use his body to not only generate more power in his swing, but also develop quickness on the field. We will keep him healthy so he can enjoy a long, fun career.
3.) Your daughter may have a pretty jump shot, but if she can’t play any D then she’s not going to get significant playing time on Varsity. What makes good defense? Strength, good footwork, and a quick first step – all which we will make her excel in.
4.) All athletes and all sports are different. If you work with a trainer or go to a gym that has your softball player, waterpolo player, rugby player, and soccer play do the exact same workout, then you are at the wrong place. There are definitely parts of training that will overlap between sports. There is general training, which will be similar between sports, but the specific training is where it differs, even with in the sport. If you are a sprinter and you come to 1RM – I (Melissa) won’t work with you… Bobby will. Bobby is a former track athlete who is great at teaching maximal speed, running mechanics, and really knows how to make athletes more efficient. I, on the other hand, am a former team sport athlete who excels at teaching change of direction and working on things like home to 1st time.
5.) Your college Strength & Conditioning program may not be helping you and may actually be hurting you. Bobby and I have both interned under some great coaches, but have also seen and experienced some sub-par programs. If you are a college level rower and your program looks the exact same as your friend who plays collegiate baseball, then you need our help. And you need us even more if your college baseball coach is running your S & C workouts. If you are running long distance, doing swimming workouts for conditioning, and watching half your teammates suffer from nagging injuries, then you need our help.
6.) You can’t make your athletes do the same conditioning drills you did in the 80’s and expect them to still excel. Yes, some things don’t change and some drills are still great. But the Strength & Conditioning field has changed drastically from the 80’s and so have athletes. If you expect your athlete to see drastic changes in power and speed, they need to do drills that aren’t 30 years outdated. Think of the strength and conditioning world as if it were a computer. Would you still use Windows ‘92 on your new Dell processor? No. The strength and conditioning world advances just like technology. Oftentimes, improvements are due to better technology. Do you remember spending time working on mobility, myofascial release, unilateral strength, and external rotation? Those words are like ipod, ipad, and Wii – they weren’t talked about 30 years ago, but they are a main component of today’s S & C. We will use drills that have been proven for years to work, but we will also use the latest techniques to improve performance.
7.) Sport coaches teach skills. They teach how to field, how to throw, how to kick, how to catch. They teach offense, defense, and everything in between. And to ask them to be experts in Strength and Conditioning is absurd. Sport coaches may know how they used to condition and lift when they were athletes, but they don’t have the time to invest into studying advances in S & C. And they shouldn’t have to do that. Their job is to develop skills in the athletes; strength coaches make them stronger in their movements. A strength coach should know that a pitchers performance is only hindered by going for a run in between starts. However, some sport coaches haven’t figured that out yet. Strength coaches should know why lifting will help female athletes, sport coaches might not. At 1RM Performance, we work with sport coaches to develop a program that will take your athlete’s game to the next level.
There you have it: the top 7 reasons to work with us. And if you didn’t like the first 7, then here’s #8 – we are really fun people.
