Ultimate Soccer Training » Club Play

Brian’s Story: Soccer-Specific Training & Building a Champion!

CoachZ — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 09:21:57 +0000

Brian and Motivation: To Believe in One’s Self!

When working in the area of sports motivation, a coach is presented with myriad challenges almost at once! This is particularly true when done in concert with, and in the context of, sport-specific, sex-specific strength and fitness training. In this case, I was working with a young boy, Brian, who was 10 years of age when we started working together. In Brian’s case it was crucial to develop a motivational climate that was both positive and encouraging in nature. The challenge when dealing with high-performance, top-caliber athletes, even at Brian’s age (or perhaps even more so!) is to balance positive feedback with constructive suggestions meant to develop the athlete physically and psychologically. The coach must strive to encourage and develop an environment, a relationship, more carrot than stick.

Just entering adolescence, and puberty, Brian had a particular constellation of challenges that only an experienced fitness instructor/strength coach should have gone anywhere near! Fortunately for both of us, some of my most difficult clients ended up as my finest students and life-long friends! This would be the case with Brian, a diamond in the rough, a jewel to be treasured years into the future. His children have been my clients, and now, Brian is talking about his grandchildren, when he has some, becoming part of a legacy that started with a quiet, shy, even nervous young kid. A young boy who would become a champion. A champion in every sense of the word!

But that part of the story begins later today….

Tomorrow: Brian Begins, Quits, and Begins again!

Until later today? YUP!

See You in the Cheap Seats!

CoachZ
216-712-6526
coachz@ultimatesoccertraining.com

US Youth Soccer Show: It’s about more than winning!

CoachZ — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 23:53:02 +0000

Spam: Unsolicited Advertising or Lunch Meat!

CoachZ — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 10:29:15 +0000

We at www.ultimatesoccertraining.com want to make this post quick, direct, and to the point. Why? Mainly because we hate being made to feel like a bunch of elementary school teachers! Spam, in any of its incarnations will not be tolerated. Fortunately, we’ve only had to “spam-out” two comments, so far. In both instances, the individual made an attempt to link science with his or her product. Not cool!

Please be aware of one thing, we spend a great deal of time selecting just the right topic, along with the supporting articles, posts from other blogs, and even outside experts. In other words, several independent sources are consulted and verified before an article is “published.” The aforementioned experts and expert sources, combined with my 30+ years of experience training athletes at virtually every level all come together to serve the soccer community. Here at www.ultimatesoccertraining.com, we strive to deliver up-to-date, cutting-edge information useful to both male and female soccer-athletes, young and not-so young, all levels; head coaches, assistants, strength coaches, and athletic trainers; parents, press, fans, and fanatics! In other words, fans of all kinds and all ages!

The Ultimate Training Company, and www.ultimatesoccertraining.com, will continue to deliver information that is as accurate as possible. Self-promotion, as well as independent service and product promotion, unless cleared in advance, is unacceptable and will be filed immediately. OK? When it comes to material offered here, we have our own consultants: coaches, strength & fitness personnel, athletic trainers, physical therapists, and sports medicine physicians. Ultimate Soccer Training also has a kinesiologist, and an exercise physiologist on staff, both as consultants. We guarantee we will do everything humanly possible to ensure whatever you take away from your experience with us, is it will be valid and scientifically anchored in the data, not anecdotal pseudo-science.

Thank you for your response to date! Realize this, without you, we cannot hope to serve the sport-specific (soccer), sex-specific strength and fitness needs of the soccer (football/futbol) community. Strength and fitness training includes not only physical and mental training but mental and nutritional instruction as well. Unless you have a masters or doctorate in diet and/or nutrition, please refrain from offering nutritional advice. Thank you!

Later today! Soccer-specific, sex-specific training and a positive mental attitude.

PMA!

See you in the cheap seats!

CoachZ
216-712-6526
coachz@ultimatesoccertraining.com

Stand Up, for the Champions, Stand Up! The Promise of Women’s Professional Soccer!

CoachZ — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 17:01:31 +0000

Kobe Bryant: A Soccer Fan of FC Barcelona and Ronaldinho

CoachZ — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 15:33:04 +0000

How bad do you want it & what sacrifices are you willing to make?

CoachZ — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 17:25:29 +0000

Soccer Fitness & Somewhere in the World!

I used to have a coach who would also follow up the two quotes above with the following challenge:

“Someone is training when you are not. When you play him, he will win!”

I have either competed in athletics or trained athletes at every level for more than 45 years, sometimes training and competing at the same time. During this period, spanning almost half a century, there have been five truths that have stuck out and remained constant:

1) “Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all time thing. You don’t win once in a while, you don’t do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time. Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.”
Vince Lombardi

2) “I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle – victorious.”
Vince Lombardi

3) “Confidence is contagious. So is lack of confidence.”
Vince Lombardi

4) “The dictionary is the only place that success comes before work. Hard work is the price we must pay for success. I think you can accomplish anything if you’re willing to pay the price.”
Vince Lombardi

5) Fatigue makes cowards of us all.
Vince Lombardi

All five of these quotes, made famous by the great Vince Lombardi and recognized around the world as his, have their foundation standing on three pillars…a combination of common sense, motivational speaking, and sport’s psychology. Lombardi was able to accomplish his challenge in quote number 2 above as few have before and, I would argue, fewer still since.

Before we set forth on our journey into the “wide world of sports,” and soccer in particular, we must be aware of the physical requirements, the physical demands, of the sport. Soccer requires a high level of physical fitness, fitness only derived by means of hard work and well planned, sport/sex-specific specific training. Don’t underestimate the levels of strength and fitness required in order to excel at The Beautiful Game. Players at the highest level may run up to 15-20 km’s per game, that’s upwards of 10-12 miles in 60 to 90 minutes of play. To be a true championship-caliber soccer player, one capable of competing at the premier-club level, the USYSA (www.usyouthsocceer.org) & AYSO (www.soccer.org) Olympic Development Program (ODP), their repsetcivestate team, regional team, or national team level, and , ultimately the NCAA DI levels! Of course, there’s play available to a select few at levels even beyond the NCAA Division I level. For a select few, there is Major League Soccer (http://web.mlsnet.com/index.jsp) for the men, set to expand yet again this year, and the newly reconstituted Women’s Professional Soccer League (http://www.womensprosoccer..com), promising a truly exciting ! Ultimately, there is play in Asia, Europe, Mexico, and South America, as well as national team play, for the best of the best, those gifted and dedicated. At any level, but particularly as soccer players grow an develop, the running involved should never resemble a leisurely Sunday jog. Unfortunately, this kind of running can be witnessed all too often and is referred to as one-speed soccer,unimagination and ugly! Soccer at the highest levels involves frequent sprints, with acceleration, deceleration, change in direction, and even vertical leaps. A well-played soccer match should resemble interval training for sprint and middle distance athletes preparing for a track and field event.

Sex-specific & sport-specific strength and fitness training is crucial, a requirement at all levels of the game; youth to adult, amateur to professional, male and female! If you desire success at the highest levels, strength and fitness training, tailored to your individual requirements and needs is a must. The associated stiffness and pain, the good pain, the kind that lets you know you’re alive, that arrives by way of with championship preparation, will be a constant companion, at least at first. As a result, it is important to begin early in the pre-season and develop a solid relationship with a sports-medicine centered physical therapist and your athletic trainer, hold nothing back! At the youth level, the proper sex-specific program will not only improve overall effectiveness, speed, strength, endurance, and agility, but it will assure the soccer-athlete a more enjoyable experience, on and off the pitch! The objective of sport & sex specific strength and fitness training, as it applies to soccer, is to help to ensure a reduction is both old, nagging injuries and new, possibly career-ending or career-shortening injuries! Soccer-specific & sex-specific strength and fitness training is put in place, in effect, to allow the players to cope with the physical demands of the game while, at the same time, allowing each player to harness and improve their technical and tactical abilities; and, reducing the incidence of injury, particularly catastrophic knee injuries in female-soccer athletes!

How do we define sex-specific strength and fitness training? What is soccer-specific strength and fitness training? Ultimately, what is fitness? Well, Wikipedia offers the following definition:

“Physical fitness is the functioning of the heart, blood vessels, lungs, and muscles at optimum efficiency. In previous years, fitness was defined as the capacity to carry out the day’s activities without undue fatigue. Automation increased leisure time, and changes in lifestyles following the industrial revolution meant this criterion was no longer sufficient. Optimum efficiency is the key. Physical fitness is now defined as the body’s ability to function efficiently and effectively in work and leisure activities, to be healthy, to resist hypokinetic diseases, and to meet emergency situations. Fitness can also be divided into five categories: aerobic fitness, muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility, and body composition.

Strength training is the use of resistance to muscular contraction to build the strength, anaerobic endurance and size of skeletal muscles. There are many different methods of strength training, the most common being the use of gravity or elastic/hydraulic forces to oppose muscle contraction. Strength training used to be viewed within the context of weightlifting, bodybuilding, powerlifting, and other power, anaerobic sports and activities. This is no longer the case, strength and fitness training are now considered absolutely vital, key components in injury prevention. Where we once felt that young athletes, particularly female athletes who had not yet experienced closure of the growth plates or undergone menarche, as well as those male athletes competing in endurance and skilled sports did not, should not under any circumstances, involve themselves in weight training activities. Basketball players, tennis players, and most athletes playing skilled positions where “touch” and skill were factors, should not touch weights during the regular season. Interestingly, until a few short years ago, almost all athletes were told to stay away from strength training during the regular season…period!

The amount of strength and stamina lost during the season often approached 60% of that an athlete started the season with! There can be little doubt that this was a contributing factor in fatigue and stress-related injuries late in the season.

Remember number 5 above, “Fatigue makes coward of us all.” Well, I would suggest that fatigue also makes patients of many.

Taken as a complex working together, sex-specific and sport-specific strength and fitness training, combined with nutrition, and linked with genetic characteristics (phenotypic expression), soccer performance is influenced in quantity, quality, and magnitude by the training regimen and biological factors affecting the soccer-athlete. Don’t let this fool you, even a naturally gifted player will require adequate conditioning in order to ensure ultimate performance and protection from injury. The risk of injury goes up exponentially as the season progresses, and training decreases. A lack of training, matched with an increase in fatigue (#5 above), and the athlete reaches critical mass. Then, depending on other factors, such as nutrition and genetics, injuries happen! Seasons and careers end!

Please try to remember, different sports require different levels of fitness and various levels of conditioning and degrees of strength. Soccer players must be able to compete and perform for up to 90 minutes. soccer-athletes require prolonged strength, strength that will last for the entire match. Match strength, combined with endurance, will have the affect of increasing energy stores, making fuel to compete on and with readily available. Fatigue and injury become less of a factor, although risk is still present, particularly in female athletes! We refer to lasting endurance as stamina, and stamina combined with strength will result in ultimate performance…an irresistible combination. A soccer-athlete, male or female, must have explosive strength to have the ability to sprint, change direction, jump side to side and vertically. Strength training leads to development, and development leads to performance. Combine strength and performance, then increase blood flow to the muscles as a result of both aerobic and anaerobic training, and a soccer player now handles 90 minutes much more efficiently, with less risk of injury due to fatigue! An offshoot of the aerobic and musculo-skeletal efficiency! The legs produce force that will enable them to pass, shoot and tackle with more power, accuracy, and efficiency as neuro-muscular coordination improves!

Finally, increased agility and co-ordination, neuro-muscular coordination, derived from a lean body composition combined with increases muscle control.
During match play, the intensity and the fitness demands vary considerably from player to player, position to position. An outside midfielder or defensive back makes run after run attempting a service of the ball, taxing stores of glycogen (carbs converted for the body and stored in the liver). Sprinting down the wing, chasing a through ball, jogging back to position or waiting for the opposition to take a throw in, a corner or a goal kick all expend energy. Soccer-footskill training, and ball-control training, when linked with strength and fitness training, create an athlete difficult to stop, difficult to resist. Training should always involve the use of balls to develop and condition the muscles used during a match. On-ball training will condition players and will also improve their technical and tactical skills, while keeping them interested and entertained all at the same time.

So far we have defined fitness and all the components of conditioning needed for soccer. So how do we achieve soccer fitness? How do we become a a first-rate soccer player? We will answer that next! Repetition? Most professional soccer players train twice a day, 5 times a week, period. In order to gain, improve or develop, you must train regularly and often. “Practice makes perfect”? Nope! “Perfect practice makes practice perfect!”

To become a great soccer player you must train and condition your body more than your competitors or opponents. Simple as that. If you want to play at the next level, you need to train frequently and with intensity in all things. Intensity! Don’t just go through the motions. Warning! Too much high intensity training will lead to injury and fatigue. Train hard, but use common sense as well.

Resistance-Progressive Overload training should never be done alone, always make sure you have a workout partner and a spotter, always.

“Learn to walk before you run.” Training sessions should be designed to stress the player’s physiological mechanisms, enough to cause the body to adapt and improve. Gradually increase the workload of your training sessions to increase the player’s aerobic and anaerobic capacities.

Specific Training!

Training sessions must be sport-specific and sex-specific. Make sure you have workouts designed for soccer training sessions, not for marathons. During pre-season add balls to the training program. Also divide players into groups based on their position and train these groups separately. Small field and small-group play is often best for a number of reasons…it is usually the most intense!

“He who runs in circles never gets far”.

Recovery: training provides the platform and stimulus for increased performance but it’s during recovery that the bodies’ physiological mechanisms for growth and improvement are implemented and gained.

“It is a sublime thing to suffer and become stronger”.

Warning: Too long a break or too long a recovery period will lead to lost benefits, including cardio-vascular efficiency! Too short s period of recovery or multiple workout in a single day may lead to overtraining, fatigue, and injury. Find the right balance and the alter it every 4 weeks, without fail.

To summarize:

1. Soccer performance can be improved by sport-specific, sex-specific strength and fitness training and conditioning.
2. Components of fitness can be divided into aerobic, anaerobic, and focused individual muscle training.
3. Genetics, and particularly the phenotypic expression, plays a a major role in the overall performance but still requires training and conditioning to reach full potential.
4. Improvements in fitness depend on training methods and need to be specific.
5. Frequency, intensity, resistance-progressive overload and recovery all play a significant role in Soccer fitness and performance.

“I don’t believe in burnout. I believe in losing your appetite”. Are you still hungry?!

See you in the cheap seats!

CoachZ
216-712-6526
Skype: johnzajaros1
coachz@ultimatesoccertraining.com

TAGS: soccer-specific training, sport-speciickids soccer fitness, soccer conditioning, soccer fitness, soccer fitness coach

Article shared and insight added with permission of Thomas Karapatsos.

Thomas Jefferson: Great Man, President, Motivational Speaker, and Closest Footballer!

CoachZ — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 15:24:25 +0000

One of the greatest men in American history, and that of the World, is Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson was the principle author of the Declaration of Indepndence. Jefferson is not only regarded as one of the greatest men in history, he is regarded by many as one of, if not the greatest president in American history, and a motivational speaker and success coach in his own right, to be sure!

Note: Keep in mind as you read through the quotes attributed to this amazing thinker that “men” was generic term of the times and not a true reflection of Jefferson’s
views towards women, a subject we will not get in to here. Perhaps on our next blog www.ultimatehistoryprofessor.com! I hope you know I am kidding here! Here are some of the great man’s thoughts, along with another man’s input, where appropriate for context.

“Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but
fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.”

Note: The only security any of us have is what’s between our ears. The more we learn the more real capitol we have to spend. In terms of athletics in general, and soccer specifically, training serves the same purpose. A well-conceived, appropriately implemented, effective soccer training program translates into ready capitol one can call upon and spend in the competitive arena.

The capitol, in this case, not only takes the form of actual performance but, more importantly, takes the form of increased self-confidence, self-assurance, and ultimately, self-worth. Knowledge is power and proper training in any athletic endeavor is powerful!

“Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.”

Note: Talk is cheap! How many times have we heard coaches say, “Don’t tell me, show me!” The true champion is one who lets their actions define who they are. Jefferson hit this one right on the head! Do you think he was a closet footballer?

“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal;
nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.”

Note: PMA! Positive mental attitude! Whether Thomas Jefferson or Norman Vincent Peale or Napoleon Hill or Vince Lombardi or Tony Robbins or Pat Summitt, every era has their motivational gurus. Yes, even Lawrence Peter “Yogi” Berra had his way with a message, a phrase-smith like no other, Berra could get his players to identify with him, love him, and play for him!

Regardless of the vehicle these special individuals ultimately choose to get their message out with, these coaches, mentors, and speakers seem to be able to motivate
people in a way few of their peers are able to. Ultimately, the PMA must come from within, someone once referred to it as a “burning desire.” Whatever you call it, if you cannot bring it to the fore on demand, you are doomed to mediocirty. The proper soccer-specific, sex-specific training, mental and physical, can go a long way towards developing the discipline to call on this attitude until, like a negative attitude, it becomes habit. (more to follow this week on this)

“Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.”

An idle mind is the devils workshop! Heard that one? Sure you have! Well, perhaps loafing won’t bring on the devil…but you’ll have a devil of a time getting playing time! Training is an all-the-time thing, whether soccer-specific, sex-specific strength and fitness training, footskills work in the back yard or for a half an hour before or after practice, running in the morning or planning your meals for the next week to ensure proper nutrition, absolutely vital to the success of any athletic training program!

Have you ever heard the story of Anson Dorrance witnessing this young woman, at 5:30am EST, running on the UNC campus. You guessed it! Mia Hamm, a champion’s
champion, running on practice days, and before classes. Talk about PMA and filling time productively. If Mia didn’t have time, she found time, made time…even if it was 5:30am EST!

“But friendship is precious; not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine.”

Note: One of the greatest, lasting benefits of training is the bond you develop with your teammates, your coach, and other training personnel (trainers, asst. coaches,
strength coaches, etc.). The friends you develop when being tested, really stretched, are the ones you will have for a lifetime, through thick and thin. Or as Jefferson put it, ”in the shade…[and]…in the sunshine of life.” What an awesome promise!

“Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind.”

Note: No matter how sorely we are tested, how much is demanded of us, how much the training pains us, the happines that comes from a real sense of accomplishment with overshadow and overcome any pain of body or mind. Have you ever found that when you absolutely did not want to work out, felt tired and just wanted to blow it off, but you did it anyway and ended up feeling great, fresh and invigorated?

You gotta love those natural opiods! There are three well-characterized families of opioid peptides produced by the body: enkephalins, endorphins and dynorphins. The met-enkephalin peptide sequence is coded for by both the enkephalin gene and the endorphin gene (also known as the POMC gene) and that the leu-enkephalin peptide sequence is coded for by both the enkephalin gene and the dynorphin gene.
From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enkephalin) and Opioid peptides: Molecular pharmacology, biosynthesis and analysis,
R.S. Rapaka and R. L. Hawks (editors) in a National Institute on Drug Abuse Research Monograph (#70), 1986.

“He who knows best knows how little he knows.” And, ”He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.”

Note: Coachability! You’ve heard the word, everyone has. The fact is, the more we know, the more we should realize we don’t know anything. OR at the very least, the more we know, the more we realize we have to learn! An open mind, combied with PMA, and the discipline to use time effectively is an invaluable combination.

“Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.”

Note: Above all, be honest with yourself and your team! Honesty is a trait that is treasured by those people you meet and deal with day-to-day. Honesty is also vital when it means being honest with yourself! Be honest with yourself and with your strength coach, together you will be able to move mountains!

“I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.”

Note: In pushing up others, you will push yourself up at the same time! Not only does it make you feel great to help your fellows, you develop a feeling of comradery that can never be duplicated by any other set of circumstances, events or actions.

“I cannot live without books I find that the harder I work, the more luck
I seem to have.”

Note: How many times have you heard this? “Oh, she’s just lucky” or ”He’s always been a lucky so-and-so!” It is frightening how little credit many are willing to give others for playing hard and training harder. Recognizing that, the saying goes: “The harder I work…the luckier I am!” And it is true, we make our own luck by being prepared for a situation that demands absolute preparation…in this case by means of soccer-specific, sex-specific strength and fitness training for match play.

“I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.”

Note: I have a story that illustrates this point perfectly!

The Story of Tommy Pitts!

It was March of 1982, I got a call from the printer that was handling fliers for a mailing I was putting together to promote a new, in-home athletic training business I had conceived of during those long nights of contemplation about how the heck I was going to make enough money during
the recession that was playing havoc with everyone’s finances (i.e., kicking everyone’s butt!). Interest rates just went to 22% for cars, and that meant I was going to try to get my junker to make it one more year.

At that time, Tommy’s dad, I’ll call him Bob, was trying to get some help for his son who had spent the previous season on the bench after a fairly respectable sophomore season. Tommy was a big kid, fast and agile, but undisciplined and a bit cocky (not always a bad thing). Well, I met with the Pitts Family and they cried about this, that, and the other for almost an hour before I finally cut them off with a single question to Tommy. The question is kind of crude, so I’ll clean it up a bit, and it went like this:

“Tommy, what are you willing to do to play next year?” He thought for a moment and then hung his head, tears in his eyes.

“Coach Z,” he said, ” I’ll never play, the coach hates me!”

The pain in his voice almost broke my heart, I wanted to give the big lug a hug and tell him everything would be fine. Instead, I asked him one thing. Here’s the question:

“Tommy, if I told you to go out in the street right this minute and s#*t bagels, would you?”

Hey, I was 27. What can I say!

Well, Tommy smirked and looked at his parents, not really believing what I had said in front of his parents. When he looked back at me and saw I was dead serious he paused. And then, in a very low voice so he wouldn’t be able to hear it crack anymore he said,

“I never want to sit on the bench again, I’ll do whatever you say.”

I smiled and nodded. You see, not only had I just made my first sale without ever talking price, only talking about what Tommy wanted and what it meant to him and his family to be able to accomplish his goal, I knew my voice would have cracked too if I’d said a word…so I nodded again!

Tommy was true to his word, often coming over to the house to get me to open the gym early in the morning, so he could workout before school, and then he’d return later when he got home. During that summer, all the way up until pre-season training started, two weeks before school and the season commenced, Tommy did everything I told him to. I never did ask him to go out in the street! You see, Tommy forgot about the past and focused on the future. Tommy began to see the possibilities, the hope of “What can be” instead of the depressing “What was.” That season Tommy, who had informed me that the coach “hated him” and that he “would never play,” started every match, ate dinner at the coaches house six times as player of the week! Tommy’s buddy Paul, who I also trained, won it the other four weeks possible! Tommy and Paul both went on to win all-Ohio honors that fall and got respectable scholarship offers to the colleges of thier choice.

All accomplished by a kid who never played, never would play again, and who the coach hated! A kid who put the past behind him and believed in one more person before quitting, giving up the sport the loved forever.

I trained 56 athletes that first summer, young and not-so-young, male and female, amateur and professional. The poorest perfomance I had for a player at any level was
by a kid from Cleveland, not really from Cleveland but I had to pick a city, who made all-district. And I was worried about him, didn’t know if he’d play or not! You see, I was comparing him with the other athletes I was training, and they were all the cream of the crop!

All those athletes had one thing in common. They all believed in what was possible, one more time!

That was, without a doubt, the most exciting summer of my life. Not for what it did for me, although my business absolutely exploded after that first season with athletes on the field, pitch, course or court after training with me for a significant period. I was excited for my kids, and they were my kids, regardless of age! And that included the professional football player who got special permission from Head Coach “S.R.” (not his real initials) to train with me instead of with the team’s strength coach, “D.R.” He had the best season of his career and never experienced the nagging injury he had been troubled with for the last several seasons. Missing two games with cracked ribs, he still ran for more yards than in any season of his professional career! Talk about satisfying!

No, not satisfying! An absolute BLAST!

More quotes attributed to Thomas Jefferson:

“I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led.”

“In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.”

“It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.”

“Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today; never spend your money before you have earned it.”

“Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.”

“One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more.”

“Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation and freedom in all just pursuits.”

“The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money.”

“To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education.”

“When angry count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred.”

“Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.”

Note: I aplogize for the length of this one! It kind of got away from me a bit. I hope you liked the story about Tommy, it is absolutely true in every detail. The fact is, I’ve had several Tommys every year since that first summer but it is the first one I remeber the best. Not for my success, for theirs…which was nothing short of amazing! A Blast!

The inspiration for this posting, in part, came from blog postings by a couple of individuals, most significantly, Joseph William. Mr Joseph William is a success coach and more of his writing can be visited at: http://josephwilliamsuccesscoach.blogspot.com/2009/01/greatest-man-in-history-thomas.html

See you in the cheap seats!

CoachZ
coachz@ultimatesoccertraining.com
216-712-6526
yahoo! IM: keepersteam

More of the Beautiful Game!

CoachZ — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 09:28:01 +0000

Footskills: The Beautiful Game!

CoachZ — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 09:06:04 +0000

Throwing Shoulder Injuries to Goalkeepers: Male and Female by Thomas E Anderson, M.D., Cleveland Clinic Sports Health

CoachZ — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 03:42:19 +0000

Note: While attention is paid to “traditional” throwing sports of baseball and softball in this article, I would suggest the findings carry over to soccer goalkeepers, basketball players, and, to a lessor degree, soccer outside backs and midfielders. Additionally, goalkeepers, including CoachZ’s daughter, also operated on by Dr. Anderson of the Cleveland Clinic, suffer traumatic injury to the shoulder joint, to include breaks in the the humeral head, as a result of diving to protect the goal.

Injuries in the Throwing Shoulder

Spring brings baseball and softball season – and a time for the throwing athlete to take heed of injuries that can occur in the throwing shoulder.

Several chronic conditions commonly result in shoulder pain in the throwing athlete. These conditions are tendinitis, bursitis, impingement and subluxation.

Warning Signs

Typically, the athlete complains of shoulder pain that has become progressively worse. Initially, the pain may be present only when throwing and for a short time afterward; however, it disappears by the next day. As the condition gets more serious, the pain progresses to the point where it is present before, during and after activity. The athlete eventually becomes unable to throw at all due to the pain.

Tendinitis, bursitis, impingement and subluxation are closely related. All of them may cause pain in the same area, making it difficult to tell which developed first. The pain may start in the tendon or in a pinched bursa (small cushion that allows tendons to move over the bone as they contract and relax) next to the tendon.

Rotator cuff tendinitis in the throwing athlete occurs when the tendon becomes irritated as it rubs on the undersurface of the shoulder. This causes the tendon to tear and become inflamed.

Similarly, bursitis results from the repeated pinching of the bursae between the shoulder structures. As the bursae swell, it puts additional pressure on the area that already is inflamed.

The combination of rotator cuff tendinitis, bursitis and the limited area in the shoulder may result in a condition called impingement. Pain and weakness with overhead arm movements are often a sign of shoulder impingement.

Subluxation is a condition in which the shoulder slips partially out of joint, then returns to its original position, causing instability of the shoulder joint. It may occur with a traumatic event, such as a fall, or with the development of impingement and bursitis. This type of subluxation is often related to fatigued muscles in the shoulder. The athlete continues throwing even as fatigue sets in. As the arm tires, the muscles cannot stabilize the shoulder, and this results in subluxing.

A final, secondary shoulder injury may occur as a result of changing the throwing motion to compensate for the pain of the original condition.

These are just some of the problems that the throwing athlete may experience. Since they are primarily related to overuse, they can be relieved by having the athlete rest the shoulder to provide time for healing; by strengthening, stretching and building muscular endurance; and by putting the athlete on a throwing program that includes a warm-up and a gradual return to throwing after a long layoff.

Thomas E. Anderson, M.D.
Cleveland Clinic Sports Health