Buy in is SO Important

Welcome back to one of my favorite days of the week where I get to vent to someone other than my mother about some of the cool stuff I come across or get to be a part of.

This week we welcomed two new sport teams to an existing high school football team we were already working with and I just feel so blessed with the buy-in. I talk about buy-in and trust so much but I really do feel it's such an underrated characteristic when it comes to sport teams.

It’s hard as a sport coach to have someone come in and use another voice other than your own to try to get your athletes better. And as an athlete, it's hard to have someone come in who is not your sport coach and tell you what to do to get better. And actually listen.

But that’s the beautiful thing about creating a good culture and doing good work- the buy-in is you being yourself. If you create a hard working environment and create a space where athletes feel good and know they're getting better, others will naturally gravitate to that and want to be a part of it.

I cannot wait to start rolling with these new teams and I am STILL just GRATEFUL TO BE HERE.

Gold from Ken Clark

I’m not sure what I was looking up for twitter to populate a tweet back from 2019, but I’m glad it did. And since it came from Dr. Ken Clark- I know it is still relevant.

https://twitter.com/KenClarkSpeed/status/1196582569602629634

The tweet shows a video of an athlete coming out from a block start and taking a few steps as it records the vertical and horizontal force in Newtons simultaneously.

I love videos like this because instead of just looking at it from a coach’s eye you can pinpoint and synchronize the force with the motion and get some objective data. I also love that the video is shown in slow motion because I think it's easy to forget how much longer the ground contacts are in acceleration vs max velocity.

If you play the sprint demo video, the athlete performs a really solid start out of the blocks and does a great job projecting his body forward. This is shown simultaneously on the graph as the horizontal force line, labeled in red, shoots up significantly as the athlete starts.

Now there is still a vertical force component that also changes significantly after the first step or two. As we all know, an athlete popping straight up coming out of the start will slow them down, have them hitting top speed early, and will struggle to maintain or build off that position.

Ideally, we want athletes to project their body forward as much as possible in those first few steps, and then continually and gradually allow their body time and room to rise. Each step the body should be rising slightly and that will in turn affect the vertical force capabilities.

Ken Clark is the goat, as are everyone else involved in this study and I love applying the visual stimulus to the data- please follow Ken Clark if you don’t already, thank me later!

Female Spotlight

This week I would love to highlight a coach that I have been following for a couple months now and I wish I would have found sooner! For anyone looking to expand some of their knowledge in relation to basketball specific training and weight room programming- Jess Racz may just be your girl.

Check her out on Instagram.

Jess played basketball all her life and throughout high school, and much like myself unfortunately did not continue through college due to lack of guidance in the sports world and truthfully a lack of confidence. Which I think is something we all need to hear. Being so involved in the performance industry and even for younger female athletes it’s important to develop a sense of self outside of sports because it will give you an even better grounding and foundation whether you continue to play or not.

Jess currently lives and works in the DMV area at a private basketball performance space and works with high school athletes all the way up to NBA and WNBA. She really started from the bottom, mopping floors and working the front desk for a free Crossfit membership and gradually switched her passion from basketball to training full time for CrossFit. After an injury and working around coaching and physical therapy she started training kids on her own and eventually realized that her true passion came from working with athletes, physically and mentally, to perfect their craft and has fallen into a primarily basketball-based focus.

Jess worked through a number of D1 college internship positions and over the last 3 years she took the leap into the private sector running her own business JR Performance. And as scary as it is, she is KILLING it.

For anyone that has not been introduced to Jess I highly suggest checking out her page and her work, and would also like to announce that she will be our guest for the More Her Speed Monthly Webinar for June!

A reminder that webinars are for members only so if you are not a member and would like to join and learn more from Jess and myself: https://moreherspeed.podia.com/

Quote of the week

“Your talent determines what you can do. Your motivation determines how much you are willing to do. Your attitude determines how well you do it.” — Lou Holtz

Appreciate y’all,

Cici

See you again next week!

In the meantime, here are 3 ways you can stay tapped in:

1. Get access to more free game here.

2. Join a group of badass women in the More Her Speed Membership here.

Click the link below to apply 20% off your order with code CICIMURRAY. I’m telling y’all, it has literally changed the tone for my day.

https://strongcoffeecompany.com/?ref=Qs92GFc6gn9Q3e