No Pain, No Gain?

Often we hear sport and strength coaches using the phrase “no pain, no gain” as motivation to push their athletes through challenging practices and workouts.  Vigorous workouts that are purely designed to push athletes to the brink are misguided attempts to test their pain threshold more than their athleticism.  The purpose of training programs as an athlete, obviously, is to become a better athlete.  Being a better athlete also requires the individual to be out on the practice field and competing day after day. Injury prevention and regeneration strategies are key components to the overall athletic development model.  Without understanding the athlete’s current snap shot of their performance levels, strength coaches would be taking a blind approach to training their athletes.  A key component to quality strength coaches begins with their assessment protocol.

Assessing each athlete is the first step in any great strength coaches training program.  The assessment process is the main tool quality strength coaches use to educate themselves on an athlete’s limitations to have a better idea of where to begin with each athlete.  Incorporated into any quality assessment are pain clearance tests.  If the athlete experiences any pain through those tested movements, he or she should be immediately referred to a health professional.  Strength coaches who choose to train a client after complaints of pain in the assessment are jeopardizing the health of their athletes through negligence. 

Strength coaches’ purpose for training athletes is not to inflict pain but to teach sound movement patterns to reduce stress on the athlete’s joints.  Generally, elite athletes are masters of compensations within their athletic performance.  Therefore, our job as strength coaches is to help reteach those movement patterns so they can be more efficient, requiring them to compensate less.  The less the athlete compensates, the less likely those compensations will result in injury.  Unfortunately, the common misunderstanding aspiring athletes have is they believe training is all about big muscles.  What they do not understand is that those model athletes they look up to first mastered their movement patterns and body weight.  Over years of training they began adding load to their workouts to morph their body into a well functioning machine.

Training athletes is all about getting results in the most efficient and effective ways possible.  Therefore we must know where the athlete’s athletic movement profile currently is before we can have any idea of where to begin.  Every athlete is unique and has their own strengths and weaknesses within their athletic movement profile.  The strength coaches who master the assessment and can build the proper progressions based off the assessment’s results will keep their athletes coming back.  So lets educate our athletes on the importance of owning their movement patterns and instill the idea of progressions.

Andrew Banner, CPT, is a strength coach at Synergy Athletic Performance (www.synergyathletic.com) in Dallas, TX.  Andrew and his teammates work with competitive athletes to further their development and enhance their performance in their respective sport.  He can be reached at andrew@synergyathletic.com or on Twitter (@BannerWorldWide).