The Athlete Development Journal🥇

Train your mind. Build your body. Fuel your soul.

Listen to this episode in the car with your athlete. ⬇️

You can also listen on ​Spotify​ or ​Apple Podcasts​.

Mind. A conscientious killer.

There are two main character traits that I think lead to getting the most out of your athletic potential: Conscientiousness and Killer Instinct.

• Conscientiousness: the tendency to be organized, responsible, self-disciplined, and deliberate in the pursuit of one’s goals. Or, in simpler terms, conscientiousness is the ability to focus on the small details and show up with elite work ethic in everything you do.
• Killer Instinct: the ability to flip the switch on game day and compete with confidence, ruthlessness, poise, and assertiveness. (Obviously, this is a much less technical Zachism.)

Conscientiousness alone will lead to success in areas where prolonged effort wins (like becoming a doctor), but you have to have killer mode in order to perform at your highest possible level on game day.

Conversely, some people have killer mode, but don’t have the conscientiousness required to build their physical engine and technical skills during the off-season to maximize their God-given abilities when game day comes around.

How would you rank yourself on Conscientiousness and Killer Instinct?

Body. How to stop 95% of injuries from happening.

Most injuries happen at the beginning of the season.

Why? There’s a rapid spike in how much work you’re doing (volume) and how hard that work is (intensity).

We’ll call the combination of volume and intensity, “load” to make it simple.

Injuries happen when the amount of load placed on a body part exceeds the amount of load that body part can currently handle; we’ll call this the load capacity.

Our bodies are incredible, however, and they can adapt to be able to handle more load over time.

If you do too much too quickly, you’ll cross your body’s current load capacity and end up injured (graph 1 below, red line = load capacity).

If, however, you get close to your load capacity, but don’t cross it, your body will lay down more strong tissue and increase its load capacity (graph 2 below). If you continually get close to your body’s load capacity without crossing it, you can push your body to be able to handle insanely high loads.

Think of it like getting a sun burn versus getting a tan.

If you spend all winter and spring indoors, then go lay out for 5 hours on the first day of summer, you’re applying a massive load of UV radiation that your skin isn’t ready for. The result is a painful sunburn. (The UV radiation is analogous to load and the sunburn is analogous to injury.)

If, instead, you spend just 20-30 minutes in the sun, you might get a little pink, but you won’t burn (unless you’re my wife, sorry babe). This controlled exposure is a stimulus that tells your skin to build some protection.

In response, your body produces more melanin. Over time, with gradual and consistent sun exposure, you build a tan. That tan is your skin’s adaptation; its new, higher load capacity. This allows you to handle more sun without getting burned.

With training, the best way to avoid crossing that load capacity is reverse engineering.

Start by figuring out the peak loads that you’ll go through. What is the most load you’ll undergo in a week’s span at any time throughout the season?

For most athletes, that actually happens in training camp/ pre-season. Coaches normally go a bit crazy trying to make sure the team is conditioned enough and put more load on their athletes in pre-season than their athletes will get at any point during the competitive season.

So, we actually have to use the off-season to prepare you for pre-season, not just game days.

After you figure out the peak loads that you’ll go through, then we systematically work backwards to build up by roughly 10% each week.

I like to have our athletes start roughly 6-8 weeks before pre-season. So, you would start with 40% to 60% of your peak loads on week 1, then add 10% each week. The week before pre-season starts, I like to take a step back to roughly 70% of peak loads to go into camp a bit more fresh.

• Week 1: 40%
• Week 2: 50%
• Week 3: 60%
• Week 4: 70%
• Week 5: 80%
• Week 6: 90%
• Week 7: 70%
• Pre-Season: 100%

FAQs:

“What loads should I be looking at for my sport?”

• Basketball: Jumps, sprints, change of direction, shots.
• Volleyball: Jumps, hits, serves
• Baseball/softball: Swings, throws, sprints.
• Soccer: Sprints/running, kicks, change of direction, jumps.
• Football: Sprints, change of direction, contacts, throws (if QB)

For all of these metrics, you want to track both volume and intensity.

“How do I figure these numbers out?”

Unless you happen to have a Catapult or similar system to track your personal data, you’re not going to be 100% accurate. So, you use the best proxy measures you can find.

• Watch your film. Sit down with your game film, a spreadsheet, and a stopwatch. Log every throw, or run, or change of direction, or jump, or whatever else. Write down the volume (distance) and the intensity (this will be estimate as percent of effort).
• Look at research data. There have likely been studies done on athletes around your age in your sport. That data can give you a good starting point. It will obviously be different based on style of play and rules of the game (8 vs 10 min quarters for example). But, it’s a good starting point.
• Talk to your coach. If you have a super-organized coach, you might have a good idea of what exactly will be done at practice. You can use that to get a good gauge of what will be expected of you in the pre-season.

Soul. What’s your “why?”

It’s a simple question, but the answer can be profound. Why do you do what you do?

I said that the answer can be profound, but in today’s world it usually isn’t. Most of the time we’re just going through the motions. We do things for the sake of doing them, because that’s what everyone else is doing, or because we’re taking the path that society has deemed the safe and normal one.

The thought of wandering aimlessly day to day terrifies me. I don’t want to live a life defined by the path of least resistance and societal norms; and I don’t think you do either. I want to wake up every day and make choices that fulfill my greater purpose. In order for you to do that, you need to identify your greater purpose. You need to identify your “why.”

Your “why” is the reason that you do what you do. It’s what gets you out of bed on tough days. It’s what pushes you through hard training sessions when you feel like garbage. When defined and reflected on regularly, it’s your north star and your guiding light. It gives you clarity and direction to navigate the impossible choices.

Take some time to identify what makes you tick and write it down. Then look at it and think about it each day. Reflecting on my “why” allows me to feel peace and purpose when chaos comes and it should do the same for you.

A couple important things…

1. This newsletter is completely free. I spend many hours each week researching, writing, and illustrating. The best way you can support it and allow it to continue is to share it with people you know. You can just send them to ​gtperformance.co/newsletter​ and they can subscribe there!
2. Everything in these newsletters and on our website is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as medical advice for you or your athlete. Consult directly with a healthcare professional.

Thanks so much for your help in spreading the word about athlete development!

Be >,

Zach

Dr. Zach Guiser, PT, DPT, CSCS