Developing a Teaching Hierarchy

My last entry asked you if you have a philosophy and I talked about how I developed mine.  Along with your philosophy you need to also have a mechanism in place to apply the teaching principles of your philosophy.

This mechanism is called a teaching hierarchy.  You may have one without knowing it; if you don’t have one you might have an issue with the implementation of your philosophy to your coaches and your team.

For my teaching hierarchy I go back to Dr. George Morgan.  Dr. Morgan was one of my professors who had a great impact upon me personally and on the development of my philosophy.  Dr. Morgan was a professor at Chadron State College in Nebraska. He taught Anthropology, and he loved teaching so much he actually passed away while teaching in the class room.  During lectures dealing with Social Anthropology, Dr. Morgan talked about Abraham Maslow and his work in developing his theory on the hierarchy of needs. 

As I continued through my educational path and started taking my teaching block classes (my undergrad degree is a BS in Education) I found more and more references to hierarchies.  So as I developed my teaching philosophy I began to develop my own thoughts as to my teaching hierarchies using the philosophies of the great thinkers and teachers before me.

When I left the football coaching profession and entered the strength and conditioning profession full time, after the 1997 season, I began to focus on the needs required to develop the type of athlete’s that could win – not just once in a while – but consistently.  As I developed my philosophy I was working through the process that would allow me to bring about the greatest results.

I developed a natural hierarchy that I followed from the time I started coaching at the high school level all the way through my coaching career.  This process still continues today.  My teaching hierarchy when training athletes is: HOW TO / HOW FAST / HOW MUCH.

The progression flows very easily and is quickly assimilated into any training program.  I actually have proof of this.  I was looking over a college summer program that a son of one my friends had obtained from the school he had received a scholarship.  Within the book was my teaching hierarchy.  Out of curiosity I called to talk to this Division I college strength coach and see how it became part of his training manual.  He told me he had always used it ever since he started as a strength coach.  As we talked I found that the hierarchy had been given to him by a coach he had worked for, and who had been an assistant of mine several years before.

I was very excited that an idea that I saw so clearly could become part of other coaches’ teaching and training vernacular.  Being a strength coach can seem sometimes that you are living in an isolated world.  Because of the schedule that I have at this level I miss all of the major national strength coaches conventions so I have to rely on the product that we are turning out each season to measure our progress and my phone calls and visits to other training professionals.

How To: This deals with a wide range of thoughts.  How To is much more than just teaching great technique.  How To is progressing along a string of variations to obtain the greatness that you have always dreamed about.  Making sure that your athletes understand the intricacies of each movement, drill and being part of the program.

·         Technique: 

·         Compete: 

·         Work Ethic:

·         Respect:

·         Communicate:

How Fast: This progression looks not only at how fast an athlete runs, but more importantly making sure that the athlete moves in a specific speed for each movement.  Some movements must be done at “game speed” while others are faster or slower.  The How Fast also focuses on the way that the athlete or the team works.  Maybe most importantly How Fast is all about how different movements are introduced throughout the training period.

·         Speed of Movement

·         Speed of Bar

·         Tempo

·         Speed of Progression

How Much:  The bad part of How Much is that too many coaches become obsessed with How Much – all they care about is How Much are the players lifting – How Much are they running – How Much time did it take that player to run 40 yards.  To me this thinking is the last thing one should focus on.  When the How Much becomes the main emphasis you have stopped developing athletes and are now focused on the end results.  When this happens you have lost the key to how to train your athletes to the best of their ability.  You have stopped doing what is right and have become lost in what is flashy.   

·         Weight

·         Reps / Sets

·         Workload

·         Information

·         Time

·         Calendar