The Athlete Development Journal🥇

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

Mind: Everyone hates school, let’s fix that.

I’ve been unofficially polling our athletes about school. There seems to be a consensus: they all hate it.

That’s probably unsurprising to you. But, should that really be the case?

Should kids hate school?

I feel this on a visceral level. I thrived in school. I graduated 1st in my class in my doctoral program and had a 3.99 GPA in undergrad. I was built for school.

But, I HATED it. It destroyed my mental health. It killed my creativity. It (erroneously) taught me that waking up and dreading 6-7 hours out of your day was a normal and expected feeling.

You know what, though? I LOVE learning. I spend my entire days listening to nerdy podcasts. Some relevant to my day-to-day life, some just completely random things that I get curious about.

Most of the young athletes I know are the same way. They light up when they learn something that’s interesting to them.

If learning is so fun, why does school have to be the complete opposite?

My daughter starts preschool today. Like most parents, I just want to find ways to make her life better than mine, which means I’m thinking a lot about how we can improve her educational experience.

One of my favorite discoveries is what’s going on at Alpha School.

Kids are getting educational outcomes that are twice as good as they would in traditional school settings, while only doing 2 hours of schoolwork per day. No, that’s not a typo.

How?

It all boils down to the Two Sigma Problem.

In 1984, education psychologist Benjamin Bloom conducted research that showed that an average student tutored 1-to-1 performs two standard deviations higher than an average student in a traditional classroom setting.

While some experts will debate the replication of the “two standard deviations” improvement, it’s universally accepted that getting tutored 1-to-1 will result in much better learning outcomes than a traditional classroom.

The problem, however, is that it’s logistically impossible for every student to get 1-to-1 tutoring. So, since 1984, we’ve been teased. We know how we can improve educational outcomes, but we can’t do anything about it.

Or at least we couldn’t.

Now, the AI boom has made fully individualized, 1-to-1 tutoring scalable. And if Alpha School is an accurate early indicator, it’s highly effective.

Students spend 2 hours per day learning from their AI software stack. They have adults leading them (they call them guides), but they don’t do any educational instruction.

The guides’ primary role is to provide motivation and emotional support. (Which, I believe, is why most people choose to be teachers in the first place. I know a lot of great teachers. None of them chose their profession because they love designing lesson plans.)

After the kids finish up their schoolwork for the day, they have 4-5 hours to learn more meaningful life skills. That could be entrepreneurship, sports performance training, producing musicals, public speaking, wilderness exploring, financial literacy, and so much more.

The 2x outcomes in only 2 hours per day thing is cool, but you know what’s even cooler? Over 90% of the kids at Alpha School report that they love school. That’s a far cry from the poll results I’ve heard from our athletes.

Body: My 5 main sprint technique takeaways

I’ve spent the last 6 months wading into the deep end of speed training. Now, with my head above water, I want to share the 5 simple things that I find myself coaching over and over again.

1) Do not strike the ground with your heel.

In the first picture, Katie’s contacting the ground with her heel. In the second picture, Macky’s contacting the ground with his toe.

During acceleration, this one might not actually make you faster, but it will keep you healthier. Nobody’s very fast with a pulled hamstring.

2) Get close to full triple extension early on.

On the left, Rylan is bent over at the waist (which means he doesn’t have full hip extension), his knee is more bent, and his ankle is still flexed. On the right, his hip and knee are much closer to full extension. You can draw a pretty straight line from his ankle to his head. You can’t do that on the left.

I see a lot of athletes who are so focused on moving “quickly” that they’re actually slowing themselves down. They pick their legs up and put them down fast, but they don’t cover ground.

This might click for you when you think about pushing hard into the ground. Or you might do better thinking about jumping and bounding out of each step. Try it out, analyze the film, and compare your times.

3) Swing your arms.

On the left, Dane has a small amount of shoulder extension and a closed elbow. On the right, Dane has more shoulder extension and a more open elbow, which matches the extension of the back leg. You can see the downstream effects of a more violent arm swing. He was able to get more hip, knee, and ankle extension and a more horizontal projection angle.

The arm action can help drive the leg action. If you have short, choppy arm swings, then you’ll have short, choppy leg swings.

4) Punch your knees up.

In the first picture, Lira’s thigh is well below parallel with the ground. In the second picture, her higher knee punch cleans up a lot of other mechanical flaws.

When you get upright on the max velocity side of the continuum, make sure you punch your knee high enough to get your thigh close to parallel with the ground. That alone will keep you away from some dangerous backside mechanics and check a lot of other boxes.

5) Find the blend of patient relaxation and violent aggression.

Sprinting is a unique art form. You have to simultaneously be both incredibly relaxed and incredibly aggressive.

If you’re too tense, you can’t turn the antagonistic (opposing) muscles off enough to get the most out of each step.

If you’re too passive, you won’t put enough force into the ground to get the most out of each step.

Relax your face, relax your neck, and relax your shoulders. Then, let it rip.

Are there other things that matter? Sure! But, if you take care of these 5 things, you’re 90% there.

So, pull out your iPhone, record your sprints, break down the film, and see what boxes you don’t yet check off.

Soul: You can just do stuff.

One of the most important realizations that I’ve ever had in life is extraordinarily unprofound: you can just do stuff.

If there’s something that you think should exist in the world, then you can go build it. You can take a thought straight out of your head and you can bring it to life in the physical universe.

“The world is a very malleable place. If you know what you want, and you go for it with maximum energy and drive and passion, the world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you would think.”

― Marc Andreessen

The problem, however, is that the world is going to try to convince you otherwise. Don’t let the world steal your passion. Don’t let the world steal your self-belief. Don’t let the world steal your agency.

Don’t let the world change you; you go change the world… by just doing stuff.

A couple important things…

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Everything in these newsletters and on our website is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as medical advice for you or you 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