Top 5 Things I Learned from the 2020 Notre Dame Strength & Conditioning Clinic
Top 5 Things I Learned at the Notre Dame S&C Clinic
This was the second time I’ve attended this clinic, and it didn’t disappoint.
For the second year, I attended the Notre Dame Strength and Conditioning Clinic up at the LaBar Football Practice Fields. It was a great two days of learning and networking, and I feel refreshed and ready to tackle new challenges. Hats off to the team that organized the event– I think this year might have been even better!
So, what did I learn? A lot. I have 14 pages of notes in a Google Doc. There’s so much to communicate, but I’ll keep it to my Top 5. Here we go!
1. Question Everything with an Open Mind.
Just because it’s what we’ve always done, doesn’t mean we keep doing it.
When you think of classic American Football methods of testing their athlete’s performance level, what comes to mind?
110s? 300 yard shuttle? Half gassers?
Take it from a strength coach that worked in professional rugby for nearly a decade with experience in several different countries, and now working in American Football. Just because it’s what you’ve always done, doesn’t mean you keep doing it.
Keir Wenham-Flatt (@RUGBY_STR_COACH) challenged our mindsets. When evaluating athletes, we need to know why and how we test them. Our tests should simulate the biodynamics, the biomotors, and/or the bioenergetics that the sport demands. How do we know what a sport demands? Look at the data.
He broke down the average statistics of football for us, and it came down to about 5 seconds of all-out work and 35 seconds of rest.
Let’s evaluate those classics testing methods…
300 yard shuttle — Takes way longer than 5 seconds to go 300 yards and longer than 35 seconds to recover
110s — it takes good players 15 seconds to complete
Half Gassers – these take 4 times the duration of an average play
Bottom line– challenge yourself to question everything with an open mind, and constantly evaluate your methods.
2. Coaching style doesn’t matter. Rather, your purpose and intention, does.
If you aren’t building relationships, what are you doing, really?
Eric Overland (@coach_overland) challenged us to surround ourselves with people that think differently and have different personalities and ways of doing things. He talked about how he isn’t the “JUICE” guy, but has someone else on his staff that fills that role. If you have a group of different people with different personalities working together, everyone on your team, including your athletes, gets better.
You don’t have to be a “JUICE” guy to be a successful coach, but you can be a successful coach and be a JUICE guy. The common denominator? Building and cultivating relationships with your athletes and team members.
He challenged us to be better mentors and coaches, to intentionally develop relationships, to understand why they do what they do (the “why”), and to help them create a plan to achieve their goals. But it doesn’t end there… FOLLOW UP WITH THEM. Teach them accountability.
It comes down to being authentic. Be purposeful and intentional with building relationships. Understand the personal storms your athletes might be going through and be there as a guide.
3. Utilize the data you have for the biggest advantage
If you snooze, you loose.
Bo Sandoval (@olystrength) laid down a great case for the unique challenges of S&C in combat sports.
Now, I might be a bit biased on this one because of my years in the martial arts community of competitive Taekwondo. I was still completing my undergrad in Exercise Science back when I was actively competing, and I wish I had this level of knowledge back then!
As the Director of the UFC Performance Institute, Sandoval sees athletes of all weight classes, all specialities, all genders, and all different backgrounds. All of their new athletes go through two different assessments - SQAT and ESD. They have different ways of measuring each, but what stands out is that they continue to assess their athletes during their normal strength and conditioning programming.
In the fighting industry, every athlete’s periodization is different because their fighting schedule is different. There often isn’t a classic “16 week to a 1 Rep Max” training period. Your athlete might be cutting for a fight, and the caloric deficit will cause the output to throw off your data.
Because of this schedule, coaches have to constantly re-test their athletes during the course of their training, honing in on the aspects they identified during their assessments. UFC PI uses OmegaWave and other GPS wearables to track data on each athlete’s readiness and recovery, and they adjust their programming accordingly.
How do they test their athletes? Along the same lines as Coach Wenham-Flatt, they mimic the conditions of the sport and weight class as much as possible. Average fight times and fight conditions vary widely according to weight class, so train accordingly!
Heavyweight: 4-minute average fight time
Flyweight: 14-minute average fight time.
What does it come down to? Use your data! Design programs and test your athletes according to the data available.
4. Leadership Begins with Your Influence
It begins and ends with you.
Todd Gongwer (@TODDGONGWER) challenged us in a different way. He challenged us as people. As leaders.
He laid down a lot of knowledge bombs, but what I took personally to heart was the challenge that we all have a choice with how we respond to adversity and to success.
When you’ve made a mistake, executed poorly, made a bad play, etc… how do you respond? Do you stay calm and collected? Focused? Or do you visibly get frustrated and let that bad body language creep out?
You’re gonna be the leader that closely resembles the things that influenced and impacted you the most. When things don’t go your way, that’s when you need to choose to be a leader. Your teammates and your athletes will model after what you do, more so than what you say.
And when you’re feeling your success? Your boastful words can become somebody else’s self-talk and make them motivated to beat you. Stay classy, stay humble. Be a leader.
5. Mental Toughness is a Craft
Each Layer Builds on the other.
What is Mental Toughness? Dr. Amber Selking (@DrSelking) from Selking Performance Group laid it out for us.
Mental Toughness isn’t just one thing. It’s not just “grit” or “tenacity” or “determination.” It’s layers in a pyramid, with each aspect building on top of each other.
It’s the first time I’d seen Mental Toughness illustrated in a way that made it approachable… and achievable.
As a coach, the piece that spoke to me the most this weekend was the “Accountability” layer. A coach must serve as the model in choosing what to do, when you’re supposed to do it, and the way you’re supposed to do it. That’s modeling accountability for my athletes.
Mental Toughness is the core component to winning and success, but your motivation needs to be intrinsic (self-sustaining) in order to bounce back from failure. Every success had a lot of “fails” leading up to it. In fact, “F.A.I.L” should be thought of as “First Attempt In Learning” instead.
Now that I have these tools in my toolbox, I can be a better coach and mentor to my athletes in the realm of mental toughness.
There was a lot more that I learned in addition to this Top 5 (remember I mentioned the 14 pages of Google Doc notes?), but these were some of my most memorable nuggets. I want to take a moment to thank each and every presenter that shared their knowledge with us and made us better coaches last weekend. Your effort and leadership doesn’t go unnoticed.
And thanks to a great team at Notre Dame that organized this and made it a great experience!
Coach Jeremy “J” Raymer is a certified USA Weightlifting Level 1 coach and certified personal trainer. Prior to founding Raymer Strength, he served four years as an intern and then Assistant Strength Coach at Noblesville High School. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Kinesiology from Indiana University in 2015 and his Associates degree in Business Administration from Ivy Tech in 2012. He spent his formative years as an elite Taekwondo athlete, earning 4 National medals, punching tickets to three team trials, and representing the United States on the U24 team.
He calls Noblesville, Indiana his home with his wife, Rachael, and fur baby, Ruby.
#StayHumbleHustleHard #SHHH