There’s an image that frequently circulates the strength and conditioning and athletic world, from pre-game team meetings to sports psychology classrooms to large professional S&C conferences. The image, linked HERE, is of a team of football athletes performing a sprint/change-of-direction drill. One athlete has evidently cut his sprint short and stopped to turn around just 6” inches before the line while all of the other athletes shown have their foot on or over the line. This distance between this athlete’s foot and the line is highlighted, and labeled as “the distance between winning and losing.”
The message of this image is that the small details, often and easily overlooked, are in fact incredibly important. Vince Lombardi is frequently quoted as saying that “football is a game of inches.” This is not only true of football, it’s true of every endeavor we undertake, athletic or otherwise. If we are truly interested in performing at our highest potential, the inches, the ounces, the minute angles, the small and finite details are what will be the difference between winning and losing. The loser overlooks what the winner did not. It’s easy to brush off a shortened range of motion rep here or there, to cut a drill a few inches short, to permit mechanical faults or keep ourselves a comfortable difference from a threshold effort, but these shortcuts add up. Your whole game, whatever it may be, is inches.
- PS
Strict press - work up to 1rm in 10 minutes, then 1 set of max reps @70%
16 min AMRAP
1 KB swing (53/35)
1 SB front squat (AHAP)
2 KB swing
2 SB front squat
3 KB swing
3 SB front squat
Continue in this fashion, adding one rep each round
Posted on 07/03/2017 at 12:00 AM