Have you checked your brakes lately?

Accelerate! Speed! Power! 

These are popular words used to grab the attention of young athletes and attract  them to a system or methodology of training. True, these are attributes that we strive  to achieve in performance. But have you checked your brakes first? 

If you were to drive a high-performance sports car, would you be more interested in  how fast you can accelerate or how well the brakes work? Athletes that only focus  on the acceleration phase (concentric) of movement and not the deceleration phase  (eccentric) often times become patients at our facility.

Why does lack of control over these eccentric movements often lead to injury?  When you go fast but don’t have the braking power to stop yourself, you crash. The  inability to stop along with poor biomechanics often leads to stress that the body  cannot sustain. For example, if you have poor body positions throughout a squat  movement (during deliberate practice), those mechanics will be replicated when you  land from a jump or stop to change direction. (when it comes time for you to  perform). The poor body mechanics put undesirable stress on soft tissues and when  challenged, suffer damage. 

As a doctor, I have a passion for guiding injured players back to competition status.  As a coach, I love the performance development aspect of the athlete even more. I  enjoy being able to help athletes break their personal records by pushing the  boundaries of physics. 

The ability to move heavy weight with speed, sprint to change direction while catching a ball, and endure intense training sessions can be very appealing to  athletes. But what most beginners don’t see is that the veterans at our facility have  earned the right to perform those movements. They have spent meticulous hours  studying tedious isometric positions (holding without movement) and practiced controlling their bodies throughout entire phases of movement to get to that point.  They can control their movement. They can control resistance. They can move  well. 

We all know what we want to achieve as the main goal. The question is, are you  following the right process to get there? 

My recommendation for athletes: 

❖ First move better, then move more. 

❖ Check your brakes. 

By following these recommendations, athletes can expect to have more confidence  in their movements and reduce their risk of injury. Through our educative process,  the athlete is empowered so that they can protect themselves when they are asked to  partake in movements that can potentially bring harm. Moreover, being empowered

helps the athlete to respectably converse on a logical and educated level with  coaches, doctors and staff of their respective organizations. A concern of mine is  that I believe positions of influence and power have become more authoritative  rather than instructional and inspirational. 

If this information is helpful, check us out at: 

Website: www.train2perform.us 

IG: @dochui @paradigm_performance