Hierarchy of Success - STRATEGY

You have the overall attitude you bring to the table, you've developed a series of beliefs for your overall apporach to development, so now its time to talk about STRATEGY.  What do you want to work on?

1.Attitude
2.Approach
3.Strategy
4.Tactics
5.Execution

It's important here to differentiate strategy from tactics.  Strategy is WHAT you want to accomplish, tactics are HOW you are going to do that.  Using a sporting example, the overall goal is to win the game against the next opponent.  The strategy for that game then might be to stretch the field with longer passes because this team is strong against the run.  A specific tactic used in this strategy may be plays from a 4 wide receiver set with the tight end and running block having blocking assignments.  Strategy is the what, tactics are the how.

Talking in terms of coaching athletic movement, we need to define what we are going to try and do.  In developing the APPROACH, I talked about training movement, and using a  "guided discovery" approach.  In addition to training movement, I also want to develop the appropriate physical qualities.  The question now on both of those areas is; FOR WHAT?

To answer that I need to break down how athletes move.  In the broad picture, I'm going to focus on a universal approach for sports.

1. Analyze GROUND BASED sports

2. This does not apply to;

• Acrobatic
• Riding (cycling, snowboarding, etc...)
• Aquatic
• Combat Sports

Looking at most team sports as well as some individual sports we see more commonalities than differences in movement strategies.  Yes, there are specifics that depend on the sport, but there are only so many ways of moving the human body with our feet on the ground.

These are my categorizations of movement strategies.  This is what is going to drive how we train an athlete.  We look at the athlete, sports and position.  Consider the demands in these categories.  Then determine what it is that we should work on. 

We've developed this system over the years and were driven by by training athletes in a group setting.  Having a mix of athletes in a group, as well trying to follow some systemic approach to programing, made it essential to be able to work on categories as a whole, but differentiate aspects for specific athletes once they have basic proficiency.  Bottomline, its a system that allows us to train athletes with some degree of specificity when appropriate, in a group setting.

In upcoming posts, I will detail each category and go over examples.