OK, what is the most important area an athlete needs to train to be successful. Consider balance, flexibility, strength, power, speed, sport skill, endurance, well pick one. Well in reality they are all important. But perhaps it's none of them, maybe it's movement pattern that's the most important.
The brain doesn't recognize individual muscles. It does recognize movement patterns and then sends electrical stimulus to fire the muscles through the movement. Think back to when you first learned how to ride a bike. Wow, talk about overload. Balance, steering and peddling all at the same time, you fell, got up, fell again and before you knew it you were riding without any thought process. You had developed the movement pattern.
The best way to develop proper movement patterns is to balance your activities. That means you must identify both your strengths and weaknesses. If you have great strength and no flexibility eventually your lack of flexibility cause an athlete to adjust his movement pattern. This adjustment may lead to a loss of efficiency or even injury.
So why do so many athletes continue to focus on areas that they can measure. Because it's measurable, it contains something tangible. But what if flexibility is the athletes weakness. Without spending greater time on flexibility, that inflexible athlete will eventually become ineffective.
Eventually every athlete will, at some time, compete vs. a better athlete than he or she. What can you do to reduce the chances of this happening. Simple focus on both an athletes strengths and weaknesses. Then develop a program that focuses on movement patterns that the athlete will need to compete successfully in his or her sport. Train balance, flexibility, strength, power, etc, through those patterns and develop the complete athlete.
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