It has been an exciting year for us at Ground Force Strength and Conditioning Training Systems, here are a 5 things we learned or took away.
1/ A college degree never dictated how a parent decided to spend money with us or how an athlete trained with us. The obvious is clear, you should have a understanding how to train, exercise progressions, anatomy and how guide clients to reach their goals.
When athletes know how you care about how their success, they don't care how much you know. I have had clients ask me a question and instead of me assuming I knew the answer, I asked someone smarter than me or referred them out. They can trust us to provide the right information, not fads or biases.
2/ Sending the right message to parents and athletes from the initial consultation to each training session.
Our initial consultation includes a set of expectations from both parties, its a relationship. We want to set up athletes and parents for success so they have a clear understanding how we train, when should train and individualized success. So far, we haven't failed but we can always close the gaps in communication. Remember these are kids and not everything is communicated the same in return.
3/ When injuries occur, and most likely they will at some point in time, the reduction of time spent off the field is directly correlated with time in the weight room and recovery efforts.
The easiest thing is for athletes to do what they love, play. The hardest thing form them to do is the accessories that come along with being a better athlete, like daily mobility, completing weekly lifting sessions, eating more and better quality of foods, studying your sport or watching films. Being a student-athlete is a job. We have to make it fun for them to help them complete the accessory work so they do not get burnt out or bored from training. Remember "This is just the warm up" so get used to to it if you want to pursue it at the next levels.
4/ Training philosophies should be evaluated just as much as your business. What areas of growth are needed to make continuous progress.
When we choose a set of exercises we feel based on the evaluation, that these exercises are going to be best suited for client success. When we progress the exercise into something more challenging, we are evaluating the clients ability to handle the previous exercise. Same should apply to evaluating what training programs or systems you currently have and what could be added or taken away to simplify the process.
5/ The biggest return we have ever had is a referral from a satisfied client or team, not social media advertising.
Yes, we use social media as a means to advertise, but we are doing it a way where we want to showcase our culture, community and training and how we continue to improve in these areas. But the biggest reward is receiving the e-mail or phone call saying that xxxx referred us over and they are happy with the results they are seeing, do we have a minute to discuss their needs.
I know we have helped thousands of athletes over the years and only a fraction refer or accept our referral request and to those we thank you. If you know someone that can benefit from our coaching in person or online, please share!
There is a lot of new and exciting things we are working on for the upcoming year and we hope that you and your family are just as excited as we are!
From our Training Staff to you and your Family we wish you a Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday and Safe New Year,
James Walsh