Coaches and Trainers

Welcome Coaches and Trainers! The female athlete has arrived. The competition is tough and the benefits for her future are tremendous. Envisioning your athlete at the top of her game is incredible. The showcase of her authentic spirit during a competition season is something that will stay with her after her competitive days are over.

 Lea Cataggio (left standing) is the assistant coach for Salisbury Womens Soccer.  She is supporter of Impact Fitness DC and instructs at our sessions during the summer.

Being able to identify with your athlete’s beliefs, attitudes, and physical ability is a vital characteristic of coaching. Do you understand the female athlete and the advantages or disadvantages for her in athletic competition? Similar to how different positions equate to different physical demands, each of your players’ has different qualities that make her unique. Unfortunately, many coaches, and trainers have not recognized the differences; as a result, female athletes often have inadequate training, suffer unnecessary injuries, and may not reach their full potential. With proper training, expertise, and planning a female athlete can overcome her odds of injury and excel at her game.

Winning is rarely about doing it once and walking away. Winning is about Sustaining Performance: Sustaining Competitiveness: about getting to the top and Staying There.

A winning coach will be able to achieve this by;

1.  Understanding the demand of the sport onto the athlete though a sport analysis- This is not as obvious as it seems. A great coach knows how to coach and teach logistics; how to set up a play, or make critical decisions in the infield.

Can you as a coach analyze the aerobic duration, the impact of jumping on the joints, how many jumps, different types of jumps, or typical distance covered in a match? The evolution into a winning coach with healthy, mechanically sound athletes starts with this sport analysis and then can move onto:

The application of an in depth sports analysis. The application of the analysis will be vital for planning your training cycle and achieving greatness as a coach while the athletes improve and stay healthy.

2.  Understanding the female athlete. As a former competitive collegiate and amateur athlete I earned many great achievements as well as many injuries. I have dedicated the past 5 years of my career learning about the female athlete, not only to take care of myself and clients but to be a resource to coaches. The list below covers basic conventional wisdom for today’s female athlete.

• The female athlete is very different from the male athlete. There are advantages and disadvantages for their differences. The socialization aspect of athletics shape females to be collaborative and competitive. While males may be socialized negatively from sports by promoting entitlement and over-aggression in their development. The negative differences are biological and mechanical. The biological differences are hormonal and indicate that coaches cannot train females as they were males. If you were to train the female athletes as male athletes you are making them vulnerable to injury and negative emotional affects. Since the biological differences make them more susceptible to injury it is absolutely necessary for you to encourage off season and in season conditioning that is aimed at physical development in addition to skill development and strategic decision making skills.

• The mechanical differences from the male athlete also denote that specialized training is needed for the female athlete’s physical development. The mechanical differences are measurable and manageable with the right expertise. An accurate baseline assessment is needed to determine her power, functional strength, balance, muscle sustainability in supporting the joints and consideration of past injuries and tightness. With the information from the assessments and the analysis of the sports demand you as the coach will be on your way to having a plan for taking your team to the next level.

• Injuries can be prevented! The most feared and expensive injury is also the most preventable and prevalent to females. A ligament tear in the knee occurs in a non-contact manner during deceleration, cutting, or pivoting. The ACL Injury could be devastating to your athlete’s career. If an ACL tear occurs, it will accelerate the onset of osteoarthritis by 40%. What makes the player more at risk for injury besides just being a female is previous injury. Sprain, strains, and tears are dominantly non-contact injury. Negligent healing of injuries of any kind will linger and be reinforced by training and playing if they are not properly mended. The bottom line here is to prepare your athletes physically for a competitive season. With advocacy to the parents about all year conditioning, planning, and assessments a healthy successful season is in your reach.

• What makes your athlete stronger will make your athlete safer. Training outside of skill training is necessary in achieving both.

3.  Comprehension of the human adaptive response to exercise is essential. Adaptation refers to the body’s ability to adjust to changing physical demands. In devising training plans, this knowledge is important. A planned performance training schedule will be adjusted to the intensity of training and the fitness levels of your athletes. Training is simply the manipulation of stress onto the body. Adaption is our body’s ability to control the stress and bring the body back to the most efficient way of operating.

• If the athlete does not stay in competitive shape with carefully planned training, the athlete will experience detraining. The classic “use it or lose it” phrase is scientifically based. The time period to “lose it” is proven to be two weeks.

• Creating a planned performance training schedule should be according to time intervals between consecutive sessions of fitness training or skill training. These sessions should be selected so that all the negative traces of the preceding workout pass out of existence but the positive fitness gains persists. The premise is that the fitness effect of training is slow changing and long lasting while the fatigue effect of training is of shorter duration but of greater magnitude.

• Monitoring muscle and overall fatigue is important because of muscular tightness. In order to reach optimal performance capabilities, an athlete is forced to train at a high level of intensity. Because of this, there is always potential for injury. Some athletes may be predisposed to injuries due to muscular imbalances and the stresses that are placed on the joints and soft tissue because of the imbalances. When they train, the imbalances are magnified which leaves the body vulnerable to injury. Eventually, unable to tolerate the stress, they break down and become injured. It is like driving a car with bad alignment. Regular maintenance, variety, and rest are required to achieve optimal performance.

A coach’s planned performance training schedule has to consider physical development outside of skill training. Some coaches do not see the value in starting early. Starting as early as 10 years old with calisthenics for neural development is time manageable and easy to administer. By adding training for muscular development you are creating variety and injury prevention tactics to your plan, which is attractive for both parents and athletes. Read more about a science based approach to coaching female athletes or contact us for more information.