Don't Use A Hammer To Cut A Board: How Special Athletes Become Special

Turning My Back on the "It's my Way or the Highway' Thought Process

“Hey Coach Jochum, I saw (Insert Professional Athlete) doing (Insert Insta Famous looking exercise here), why don’t we do those, wont that make us better athletes?”

“Aw yes, we totally have been messing up our whole program because we haven’t done that exercise or don’t have that tool or don’t do foot work drills.”

Is the response they are looking for, but if I really am going to be truthful my real answer would be “It’s worthless, its all worthless” I don’t say that because I love that my athletes are looking for ways to better themselves and their teammates, but it’s the truth. Sets, Reps, Special exercises and tempos by themselves are all worthless. There is no magic bullet to creating a special athlete. There are better and more efficient ways than others, but what it all comes down to is stimulus and the response to that stimulus. That’s why it all works. Its also why it all doesn’t work. Programming is such a delicate balance of this and its why strength coaches get paid the big bucks LOL! (Refer back to last blog on “Why I Don’t do it for Money is Bullshit”)

Let’s break down why these magic exercises aren’t going to change (by themselves) who you are as an athlete.

Stimulus and Adaptation

When We look at the above chart, we can start to get a base understanding of the whole stimulus vs adaptation model. Imagine you as a blank slate athlete with no training experience. You have a base line of fitness or performance. When you introduce a new stimulus (Weather it be cross f