From the Editor – RUSS EBBETS
ABC’s
There always seems to be that semi-dramatic moment when a TV doctor holds an x-ray overhead to a florescent light, gives a quick 5-10 second scan and miraculously arrives at a definitive diagnosis. It seems improbable one could translate the black, white and 50 shades of gray that quickly, accurately and profoundly.
When you learn to read a radiograph (an x-ray) you are fed a constant diet of “normals” (technically, unremarkable radiographs). These normals present textbook examples of healthy skeletal anatomy and surrounding soft tissues. They also represent the fundamentals of that discipline. One learns to evaluate these fundamental presentations of skeletal anatomy by running through the ABCD’s (alignment, bones, cartilage and destructive patterns) again and again and again. It seems like a crazy way to teach something, but there is method to the madness.
Imagine for a moment your daily diet consisted of the same cereal, meal after meal, forever and ever. Then one day, someone slipped a raisin in the mix. It would stick out like a sore thumb. You might not be able to identify what the little deviant was but you’d know it wasn’t a cornflake.
The same happens with the steady diet of normal x-rays. Any abnormal alignment, disruption in the bony contour, asymmetric cartilage spacing or destructive patterns would stick out like sore thumbs. These aberrant patterns may need to be confirmed with subsequent physiologic tests but simply by themselves they indicate that something is “not right.”
Conscientious participation is one of the fundamental pillars of training theory. Conscientious participation is defined as knowing what you are doing and why you are doing it. The technical model for an event is a collection of the accepted movement patterns that use the various sport sciences to validate their use. Proper stance, and positioning of one’s hips, torso and arms can all be justified by referencing the biomechanical forces these positions can generate.
I was always bothered when an athlete complained that the dynamic warm-up of a practice was boring. Somehow, either I, or the athlete had missed a step along the way, and that misstep forecasted stagnation. We were going to get the chance to retrace, re-emphasize and repeat, coaching fundamentals 101.
Track & field is a technique dominated sport. Even for a novice spectator the execution of movements clearly differentiates a run from a jump or a throw. Track & field is characterized as an applied sport where the execution of a skill is devoid of physical contact (ideally) or influence of one’s competition (at least on paper). All this makes perfection of one’s technique via mastery of fundamental movement patterns all the more critical.
Regardless of one’s discipline, pre-planning of a dynamic warm-up allows the coach to hone in on basic skills, fundamental skills that prepare for and allow for the nuances of more sophisticated technical models to emerge as the athlete physically matures. Postural, core and dynamic stability can be refined to compliment changes in growth and speed and strength. Developed in conjunction with Maslow’s age-old whole-phase-whole model, improvements can result in an ever-expanding circle of competence, success and potentially competitive dominance.
There is a pithy maxim that amateurs practice until they get it right, while professionals practice until they cannot get it wrong. A large part of what gets “practiced” is fundamentals. For the athlete, thoughtful repetition of fundamentals creates motions and motor patterns that are one’s default movement patterns. And come the extreme tension of high stakes performance one’s default actions are displayed through force of habit and force of will.
Fundamentals learned right are like your shadow, they’ll go where you go and they’ll go as far as you go. So, whether your ABC’s are alignment, bones and cartilage or agility, balance and coordination the fact remains that no matter where the fundamentals take you they will always be with you.