🏃‍♀️ Managing your time, foot & ankle complex, fly baby fly, + more

It's that time again... Welcome back to More Her Speed!

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How are you spending your time?

I’ve talked in depth about my journey and how it has been anything but linear...

When I first started, I worked under Scott Moncrief who is a physical therapist in Orange County. I learned SO much from working there for 6 years.

But, the thing I learned the most? Time management.

We would see 30-50 patients a day and with that kind of schedule I had to make sure my time was allotted in the right places and I was maximizing my time in each area.

More recently, at Spellman Performance, we have been tracking our time using these time sheets.

The goal? Comparing where our time should be spent vs where it is being spent.

We track these hours every week in different categories, and then share them with the team on our group meeting the following week.

This is not to be confused with micromanaging each other. Not at all.

It's to ensure we are staying on task and not spending too much time on what isn’t benefiting the business and the team.

Work smarter, not harder.

As a coach, time sheets seem like the last thing we want to spend our time doing, but it's been a great way to keep each of us accountable - highly recommend adding it with your staff.

Foot and Ankle Complex...

We love a good educational nugget from Joey Bergles.

I’m sure most of us are familiar with Bergles, but if you aren't, he is a Dallas resident and one of the top S&C guys in the field right now.

Though his tweet came from his derivative of Cal Dietz’s work, the message remains!

The foot and ankle complex is a huge, and often overlooked factor in sprinting mechanics.

When we think about stiffness within the body, it can often be viewed negatively depending on context.

Stiffness, in this case, is a term used to described the change in length of muscles and tendons when force is applied.

Sure, muscle tightness can be a hindrance to range of motion in the context of stretching, but when looking at high power output activities like sprinting and jumping, ankle stiffness allows for more spring-like behavior of the tissues, allowing you to put more force into the ground and be able to use the ground as a trigger to propel yourself off the surface.

As stated in one of my previously recommended readings, Force by Dan Cleather, “Stiffer springs are better at storing and returning elastic energy.”

It is important to look at the demand of the task, as well as the structural properties involved.

For example, muscles and tendons have different contractile and mechanical properties and the stiffness of these structures will depend on movement and activation.

AUTUMNLOCK!!

Enough about the boys.

One lady I would love to highlight this week is AUTUMN FREAKING LOCKWOOD.

Autumn has been around sports her whole life as her dad coached a number of successful college football programs.

She graduated from the University Of Arizona in 2015 and assisted with all Olympic sports as a paid intern.

She then went on to the UNLV football program and later East Tennessee State where she got her masters and was their first full time female strength & conditioning coach (!!)

And in 2021 she started working with the University of Houston women's soccer and basketball programs.

But it doesn't end there...

Just this past month Autumn made her way back home in Philly, working with the Philadelphia Eagles!

This kind of story is all I could want for other women in sports and I absolutely admire Autumn!

I first connected with Autumn a few months back via Instagram where we just shared support for another, and when we started More Her Speed, I couldn’t think of anyone else I’d want to share the journey and struggles with.

Autumn is one of the kindest souls I’ve crossed paths with and I’m so grateful to have gotten to know her and create such a foundational and reciprocative support system.

Autumn, YOU ARE UP!!

Quote of the week

"The only tired I was, was tired of giving in."

-Rosa Parks

Don't give in. Keep moving.

Appreciate y'all,

Cici