Episode #16 - Kendrique Coats: Youth Athletes and Athletes With Special Needs

Kendrique is a Strength and Conditioning Coach and Track Coach in Pontiac, IL.  He does great work with many with youth athletes in his community and has a really refreshing look at how he approaches training young athletes.
A really special program Kendrique runs is his work with youngsters with special needs.  Kendrique started this program 2-years ago, and it's had a huge impact on him as a coach and person.  I think it's just a wonderful program he runs and very cool to see the impact Kendrique has on these young kids and the impact this fitness program has on these youngsters. 

Favorite Quotes

• "Sometimes we get so wrapped up in our own lives, that we forget how we can impact our athletes lives"
• "Parents get bent out of shape trying to pursue an athletic scholarship, when they'd be better off trying to pursue an academic scholarship."
• "Do you know if your athlete has sibling?  What their favorite music is?  When there birthday is?  What their favorite sport team is?  These things all play into athletic performance but often forgotten because X's and O's are more popular."
• "Coach I bench pressed X-Amount of weight!  Well how does that improve your sport and overall movement quality?"
• "Coaches need to be better interviewers."
• "Our services include educating athletes and parents - Educating is the #1 thing I do with parents and athletes"
• "How does getting little Johnny or little Suzy puking and beat tired making them a better athlete?"

Social Media

• Twitter - @KendriqueCoats
• Instagram - @CoatsPerformance
• Facebook - Coats Performance
• Website - https://coatsperformance.wordpress.com/

Nutrition Basics

A key to nutritional success is simplicity.

Way to many people try to complicate nutrition with crazy rules, food restrictions, counting calories, crash diets, 24-day "cleanse", etc.

The reality is, inherently we all know what we should and shouldn't eat. Nutrition doesn't have to be complicated, rather, just a few things to keep in mind. Remember, you don't have to be perfect. If you follow these guidelines 80% of the time - it's ok to be flexible the other 20% of the time.


Here are some basic guidelines to follow for better nutrition for performance

1. Get enough Protein 

Shoot for your .75-1g of protein per pound of body weight.  So if you weigh 125lbs = ~94-125g of protein per day

Healthy Protein Sources:

• BBA Shake 
• 3 oz - meat (ie - size of a deck of cards) <--- Includes beef, pork, turkey, tuna, chicken 
• 3-4 eggs 
• 3 cups of milk 
• 2 serving of Greek yogurt 
• 1.5 c - cottage cheese 
• 2.5c - dried beans/peas 

2. Get more servings of fruits and vegetables
Aim to get a serving of veggies at EVERY meal, so 5-8 servings. Aim to get a serving fruit at every other meal, so 3-4 servings. Goal is to eat a wide variety of colors, don’t just stick to 1-3 kinds.
A serving of vegetables/fruits is about the size of your palm


3. Eat quality Carb sources

With your goal of sports performance, eating some extra carbs will be beneficial, especially quality sources like potatoes (white and sweet), rice, whole wheat pasta’s, squash. Carbohydrates provide the main source of energy which will be supplied during physical activity and during the recovery period. So it is especially important to have good sources of carbs before and after workouts.

4. Eat healthy fats

Try to get 80-130g of fat each day.

Healthy Fat Sources:

• 1/2c – Avocado 1 tbsp 
• Olive Oil (preferably extra virgin olive oil) 1 tbsp 
• Coconut Oil 2 tbsp 
• Butter - use butter in place of margarine - 2 tbsp 
• Peanut Butter – 2tbsp 
• Peanuts~ 30 pieces 
• Almonds ~ 1/4c 
• 3 eggs (whole) 

5. Stick to Water

Try to avoid Gatorades, energy drinks, soda’s, etc. Stick to water and get at least ½ your BW in ounces of water – 200lbs = 100oz of water.

Save the Gatorades and Powerades for really hot days and/or if playing multiple games or especially intense games. They are great for those times, but outside of that they come packed with excess sugars and empty calories that aren’t beneficial on normal days.


Supplement Suggestions

• Whey Protein: 20-30g/post workout 
• Creatine: 5g/daily 
• Fish Oil: 1-2g EPA+DHA

Episode #15 - Shawn Myszka: Movement Mastery

Shawn is the owner and founder of Movement Mastery: The Art of Optimizing Movement.  He's a movement coach for a dozen NFL athletes and continually looks to push the envelop on what makes great athletes - great!  To him, and I agree, this means movement - not necessarily strength, or weight room numbers, or power, or motor performance - rather great movement qualities, attuned perception and action coupling, free and creative thinkers/movers, and refined motor learning processes.
In this episode we discuss everything from…

• What a movement first approach means
• How coaches can tweak agility training for better outcomes
• What reactive agility really is
• How warm-ups could be better structured for the subsequent tasks of sport
• Mistakes coaches make during practices in terms of removing messiness, mistakes, and creativity
• Where he found his roots in dynamic systems theory, a constraints led approach, and ecological psychology
• We talk about the greatest mover of all-time - Barry Sanders
• Much More

Favorite Quotes:

• "My only goal with athletes is getting them better when and where it counts, which is in the arena of sport"
• "Sport is a problem solving activity"
• "If the perception is inaccurate or wrong - the action won't be appropriate"
• "I don't refer to it as a warm-up, but a movement preparation scheme.  Warming-up is general; I'm trying to prepare behaviors"
• "A major mistake I see is the training environment is not truly representative that of which happens in the sporting environment"
• "An offensive player and a defensive player have much different requirements in sport - so should their warm-up, training, and patterns"
• "I try and learn from different fields - I've gone to watch dance instructors, martial arts instructors, teachers - it should come as no surpass that we can learn from various disciplines" 
• "Often we gets athletes so restricted on reproducing what we deem an ideal movement pattern, that we don't even know if it's ideal or optimal for that respective athlete.  Instead we should help guide and be a facilitator rather than an instructor"

Books:

• The Coordination and Regulation of Movements - Nikolai Bernstein
• Non-Linear Pedagogy in Skill Acquisition - Keith David 
• Perception - Cognition - Decision: Training the Quiet Eye - Joan Vickers

Social Media:

• Twitter - @MovementMiyagi
• https://footballbeyondthestats.wordpress.com/
• http://www.optimizemovement.com/sq/35323-movement-mastery-intro

Episode #14 - Coaching In The Public vs Private Sector

In this episode, we have a special roundtable discussion with fellow coaches to discuss the various aspects of S&C coaching in the public and private sectors.  In this great podcast we have the following coaches

• Steve Brown - UW-Oshkosh
  • Twitter - @CoachBrown19
• Zach Cahill - Northern Illinois University
  • Twitter - @CoachZCahill
• Matt Gifford - NXLevel Performance
  • Twitter - @GiffUsStrength
• Korey Van Wyk - Northwestern College
  • Twitter - @KoreyVanWyk

Topics Covered

• Caliber of Athlete
• Freedom Allowed - Freedom of programming, freedom from sport coaches, freedom of the facility, freedom of equipment, freedom of space, freedom of time/hours
• Job Stability/Security
• Typical Schedule/Hours
• Salary/'Compensation

Favorite Quotes

• "Much of my day is running around like a chicken with my head cut off, working with athletes of every make and model"
• "As a strength coach, I'm support staff, but I've found that the better my relationship with the sport coach - the more freedom and trust they give me in the weight room"
• "Much of my job was educating the parents - they often just wanted to see Jimmy and Johnny sweating, but if we're doing pure speed work, the athletes might not be sweating"
• "I have many friends, who I know are good, quality coaches who are out of jobs because their team didn't have the wins.  The higher the level, the less job security"
• "Being a good Strength coach isn't enough anymore - you have to branch out and find 1-2 other areas of speciality like speed & agility, technology, nutrition, rehab, etc"
• "Definitely a benefit of most public sector positions is the benefits like health insurance, retirement, life insurance, etc.  When I worked in the private sector, my salary was basically the same as it is now, but the benefits I now receive make my current job more worth while"
• "A hidden part of being at my University longer and longer is I always seem to be roped into more and more committees - whether it be a hiring committee or leadership committee or coaching committee - these add to additional meetings/hidden hours"
• "When I was in college, I didn't know until my senior year, that our Strength coach did summer training for free.  His contract didn't include the summer and wasn't paid to be there - I'm now in that situation with maybe a small stipend"
• "Do an internship in the college setting, do an internship in the private setting - every situation is different and you won't know what you'll like unless you spend valuable time in each setting"
• "You better love it, you better have a why to what you're doing"
• "We do such a good job in our own weight rooms of building people up, but we could do a better job building up people in our S&C community"
• "How many athletes are totally healthy?  In my experience, not very many, so spending time to figure how to work with injured people because it's a huge part of the job"