Thoughts
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3 things every coach of a physical ativity should carry at all times.
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Is your own training defeating you? Growing up in the martial arts, I encountered so many teachers who were broken. Worn out joints, damaged tissue, traumatic injuries, chronic pain – most of them were unable to perform or demonstrate their art properly anymore, yet they were held up as shining examples of their disciplines. Many,…
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One of the topics we focus on in our education programme, ADAPT, is the importance of analysing and developing your own philosophy of coaching. Coaching is more than just passing on knowledge and information, and it’s far more than just facilitating training sessions or activating participants. Coaching is a high-level human interaction skill, and as…
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CUE-JUTSU #6 When it comes to cueing for coaching movement you’ve got to get it right. And there’s a lot to get right! I’ll always teach new coaches the C6 rule – and ask them to check their cueing against these 6 simple standards. So when cueing, ask yourself the following six simple questions…
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It’s a very cool title isn’t it: Extreme Sports! Often seen with a dropped ‘E’ so you get some form of X-treme or X-awesome or x-whatever, because hey, doesn’t that make it even more hardcore, even more cool, even more rebellious? That’s sticks it to The Man, for sure, right? X’s are just bad-ass! But…
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What I have learned over the years of training is that no matter how you evolve your body it really means very little unless you also evolve your mind. We are quick to want to change the body, to strengthen, improve, shape, tone, build… But how easily or often do we attempt to change the…
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Fear is an edifice we build within ourselves. Unless you’re inhuman, you know fear. It’s natural. It’s healthy. It’s a survival mechanism designed to warn you against very real dangers and guide you safely through times of risk and uncertainty. But, if you’re like most people, the mechanism has got out of hand and grown…
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The deconstruction of movement in the fitness industry is rife. I’ve encountered so many ‘experts’ and methods that reduce what are the most natural and holistic aspects of our athleticism in an attempt to identify their component parts and so produce some kind of holy grail for understanding movement, when in actuality all that is…
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I think a hero is any person really intent on making this a better place for all people. Maya Angelou I was raised on tales of heroes. The seed was planted by my mother. She read me the entire Lord of the Rings saga, one chapter per night every night, long before I could read…
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Here’s a truth I want everyone who doubts their physical and mental potential to keep at the forefront of their mind: beneath the shell of the soft, sedentary people we have become lie the raw materials of nature’s most adaptive and capable athlete. The key word here is adaptive. If you’re not already convinced that…
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Several years ago the world of running experienced a seismic shockwave that was the emergence of barefoot running, which has gone on to spawn the minimalist shoe trend and whole new ideas on running rehab and technique around the world. That movement was largely kickstarted into action by the work of one man – a…
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Athletes call it ‘the zone’; Maslow named it ‘peak experience’; the martial arts of Japan dubbed it mushin or ‘no-mind’; most recently it has been dubbed simply ‘flow’. Whatever you choose to call it, this elusive state of heightened, focused awareness and immersion in a given activity is without doubt when we are at our…
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Have you noticed how more and more of your life is managed, and managed by someone or something else? Managed spaces, managed social networks, managed fun, ‘risk-free’ work and play environments; organised, standardised experiences of every kind. Massive over-precautions are taken in almost every walk of life now, usually as a result of a mass…
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It looks like parkour, sounds like parkour, is called parkour… it must be parkour, right? Wrong. Over the last few years we have seen a proliferation of parkour or freerunning academies all over the world, fantastic indoor and outdoor spaces with great equipment, purpose-built structures and bespoke training environments. They’ve become all the rage in…
Dan Edwardes 