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Why do some college volleyball athletes seem to be able to more easily transfer the ability to correctly turn their pelvis first before turning their shoulder and hitting arm than others?

Missed the window?

If a college athlete missed the critical window for nervous system development (mentioned in the earlier post http://powercore360.com/blog/?p=66) they have not thoroughly engrained the movement pattern into muscle memory.

Once again the critical age for nervous system development for females is generally believed to be 6-8 and 11-14 years of age. If the college athlete missed this window and is just learning to correctly sequence the turn of the pelvis, shoulders and arm in college; they can learn the movement but it takes more reps and reinforcement to keep the movement fresh in the athletes mind.

Reinforcement Reps

At Florida, Nick Cheronis quickly determined that certain players needed more reinforcement than others. Nick implemented the Power-Core 360 Pre-Practice 10-Minute Hitting Routine prior to every practice so athletes were able to reinforce power hitting mechanics each day.

This is critical as the specific motor pattern for these power mechanics need to be reinforced frequently in the athlete’s brain and nervous system to keep the movements in the athlete’s short-term memory.

Short-term and Long-term Memory

In time with enough quality reps, the power hitting motor pattern will be better developed in the athlete’s brain and nervous system, and like any motor- or sports-skill, the movement will become more automatic.

Competing Thoughts

In practice and in games the athlete’s short-term memory is often full of many competing thoughts. Thoughts about time, score, rotation and many other thoughts often fill the athlete’s conscious short-term memory. These thoughts often compete with the athlete’s power hitting mechanics which often are forgotten as a coach is trying to get the athlete to focus on specific practice or game-specific tasks.

Coaches need to remember that even though the Power-Core 360 Volleyball Power Hitting System is effective at rapidly teaching power hitting mechanics, it takes time, quality mindful reps and the coaches focus on the continual development and reinforcement of power hitting mechanics for the pattern to truly become engrained and automatic.

Coaches Observations & Reinforcement

To accelerate transfer of power hitting skills into practice and game play, coaches need to continually look for and verbally, visually or kinesthetically reinforce the need for specific players to focus on turning the pelvis quickly, using big fast arms or whatever the specific individual athlete’s cues may be to keep them thinking about using power hitting mechanics.

Visualization

Once the athlete starts to groove or engrain the motor pattern in the brain and nervous system, even thinking about the movements will stimulate the area of the brain where the motor-pattern is stored. When this happens, the brain loads up the power hitting mechanics program into short-term memory and then sub-consciously the brain then sends signals to the power hitting muscles of the pelvis, shoulders and arms, preparing the body to execute these mechanics.

So the coaches job is to not only ensure that the athlete is doing the movement development reps in the hitting system harnesses daily, but they also need to watch and remind the athlete in practice and games to use the power hitting mechanics.

Visual Reminders, Cues and Learning Style

As a coach, it may be as quick and simple as getting the athlete to look at you (and knowing their primary learning style preference; visual, kinesthetic or auditory) showing, telling or asking them to perform the movement once or twice to load the power hitting mechanics movement into short-term memory.

As I travel around facilitating hitting clinics and lessons, it’s rare that I find an athlete whose primary learning style is auditory. Most young athletes in my clinics and lessons are telling me their learning preference is visual and kinesthetic.

So coaches if you’re wondering why they just don’t get it…figure out what their learning style preference is and then provide appropriate power hitting reinforcement cues based on each athlete’s preference. You may just find out that the power hitting mechanics are more grooved than you thought, but the athlete just needs some frequent reinforcement cues and thoughts to load the program into play until it firmly becomes seated into long-term memory.

Want more consistency in your ball contact, accuracy and distance? The key may be in the stability of your base or foundation…

Just like the foundation on a house, if the foundation is faulty, the walls, ceiling and everything above the foundation will be off as well.

In the golf swing, your foundation is your feet, legs and pelvis. If your feet, legs and pelvis do not provide the necessary stability for your upper body to turn over a stable base, your swing and shot consistency will suffer.

Too many times a golf lesson focuses on getting the club on-plane (by manipulating the arms and hands) without considering the reason the club may be off-plane may be due to the lack of stability in the lower body.

Start With the Feet

Stability and shot consistency starts with the feet. For a right-handed golfer it starts with the right foot.

To establish and maintain optimal stability and consistency,  the weight should be placed on the inside of the right foot. As you perform the backswing, it’s extremely important that the weight doesn’t shift  to the outside of the right foot.

an unstable right foot will allow the hip and body to SWAY outside of the feet to the right

Right Knee Stability

The right knee is bent at address and is placed over the inside of the right foot. It’s critical that you maintain the bend in the right knee as the backswing is performed. Many golfers allow the right knee to straighten in the backswing which causes them to stand up (lose posture) which negatively impacts their ability to consistently get the body and club-head back to the correct position on the downswing and at impact.

Wiring the Circuit

To teach your body how to maintain the bend in your right knee, you have to build the specific circuit in your brain, nerves and muscles to make this happen consistently.

Speed Kills

To accelerate the building of this circuit and speed learning, slow the movement way down.  Fact is, when trying to make changes to your swing, the slower the movement is performed the more accurate and precise your movements will be. So when you practice it super slow, the body builds a more precise movement circuit and you’ll learn it so much faster than if you are moving faster.

Be Mindful

You’ll also speed precise learning if you’re actively mindfully engaged in the movements. Since you’re actually programming the brain to automatically instruct the muscles and body what to do, you want to make sure you’re focused and thinking about each movement as you perform it super slow.

See It and Feel It!

As you perform the movements super slow, look in a mirror so you can see what your right knee is doing. Then develop a feel for how it feels to perform your backswing with stable feet and a bent right knee.

Integration

It’s a waste of time and effort if your drills don’t carry-over into on-the-course performance. To maximize carry-over, make sure you do this drill with and without a club.

Start this drill initially for a few movements without a club but then quickly repeat the super slow, precise movements with a club in your hands so your body sees and feels the movement with the weight of the club added to the movement.

Many young developing volleyball players, in their quest to be accurate with the placement of their serve, learn a serving motion that reminds me of darts.

Since dart throwing is not dependent on power, most good dart throwers use predominantly the forearm to precisely control dart location.

Many volleyball players unknowingly adopt this same hitting technique as they try to control the placement of the serve.

While ball placement may be controlled with this technique, the volleyball player may never learn to hit the ball hard because they don’t learn how to use the powerful muscles of the hips, core and spine to turn the pelvis and upper body to whip the hitting arm through and crush the ball!

Players first need to learn to serve using the turn of the pelvis and body and then integrate ball placement and control into the serving motion. Otherwise, the player may end up with great control and no pop on the ball. Long-term this will more than likely limit the players ability to successfully perform at the highest levels of volleyball.

Step #1 – Learn to Turn

Young volleyball players need to learn to turn (using their pelvis and core) at a relatively young age.

Step #2 – Add Turn Speed, then Control

They need to develop the ability to turn their pelvis and body with speed and then learn to control the placement of the ball with the body turn.

Short-Term vs. Long-Term Perspective

As coaches, we have all become so conditioned short-term for instant gratification that in practice all we tend to be concerned with is accuracy. We don’t realize that our actions (an over-emphasis on accuracy) may in fact be limiting the long-term development of the athletes’ ability to hit with power down-the-road.

College coaches I talk with are amazed with how many female volleyball players cannot hit the ball hard.  As youth coaches, it may come down to our short-term focus and not understanding the future impact of our daily practice drills and actions.

Be Careful What You Measure!

A coach made a great point to me last week; “the athletes will focus on what you measure”!

So if your practice drills reinforce only placement and control you will probably get just that… However, understand that this leads to the athlete’s inability to turn their body on-the-ground and in-the-air using their pelvis and body.

Integrated Power & Control Drills

Use serving and hitting drills that integrate a turn of the pelvis and body with ball placement and control. Then measure how many serves or hits the athlete got into the correct zone or area with power and control!

Walk into the local golf shop or to the 19th hole and it won’t be long before you hear a golfer say “I Just Can’t Turn Anymore!”, “I’ve Lost Distance”, or “My Back Just Bothers Me Too Much to Play 18 Holes”…

We Don’t Turn

For many individuals, we go through the movements of our daily lives without turning our hips, spine, shoulders and other joints which are supposed to be able to turn. Without rotation these joints and the body simply get tighter, loosing the ability to turn. This decreases shot distance, makes your back stiffer, reduces the number of holes your back can tolerate; all of which certainly equates to less golf enjoyment.

Back Pain on the First Tee?

Then you go to the golf course, (of course you’ve been sitting all day, in the car, in the office or on an airplane so your back’s about as loose as a piece of beef jerky). Of course you’re running late for your tee time. You hurry to the first tee box and take a couple high-speed swings and wonder why your back feels so tight.

You know the rest of the story…you play your round [hitting less than stellar shots; frustrated (and with a stiff back)] and then you opt for a couple beers, some ibuprofen and call it a day. Then you wake up the next morning and try to get out of bed wondering why your back is so stiff back.

The Hips are King!

Did you know that the answer to a lot of your golf swing issues and your back pain is in your pelvis and hips? It’s true!

In the modern rotational golf swing, the pelvis starts the downswing for many tour players. When performed correctly, the movement and turn of the pelvis helps to improve the golf swing sequence and helps to increase distance by helping the body turn easier and faster.

Working on your ability to turn your hips and pelvis will help you:

1. get through the ball easier with less strain on the back
2. more consistently square-up the club-face at impact to hit straighter shots
3. allow more of the body turn to come from the hips and pelvis
   
4. hit the ball further

2 Minutes to a Better Swing and Back

One of the numerous benefits of the Power-Core 360 Golf System includes:

• improved pelvic/hip turn
• a better golf swing
• greater distance
• increased accuracy
• a better back

Following the PC 360 Golf System Program, simply turning the pelvis against light resistance bands for only a couple of easy minutes will make your hips and back, turn and feel better, immediately.

The PC 360 harnesses help to gently turn the hips and back. This motion works because it quickly gently moves,  stretches and activates many of the muscles around the hip and spinal joints. This lubricates the joints and relaxes tight muscles. The end result…immediate improvement in how your hips and back feel. There’s no heavy weights to push around; just a few minutes to get things moving and turning again.

So if you want to improve your enjoyment of golf by hitting the ball further, straighter while at the same time helping your back feel better, learn to turn with the Power-Core 360 Golf System!

No matter the rotational sport, be it golf, baseball, volleyball, softball, hockey, lacrosse, tennis or others, you better develop your ability to turn with speed while you’re young.

Speed Development Windows

More and more authorities are emphasizing the importance of critical speed windows for developing young athletes. Authorities such as Dr. Istvan Balyi, Ph.D. believe that both boys and girls must develop speed in select time windows. His opinion is that if an athlete develops speed as a youth, the nervous system will create a permanent memory for speed which is necessary if the athlete is ever to perform at or close to their genetic potential.

Dr. Balyi indicates that for boys the critical speed development windows are from ages 7-9 and 13-16. For girls from ages 6-8 and 11-14.

If we can apply Dr. Balyi’s perspective to rotational sports (golf, baseball, volleyball etc…,) developing young athletes must learn to turn with speed in these same critical windows. If they learn to turn in these windows, athletes will be better able to reach (over time) their genetic potential for rotational power and speed.  It should be noted that the athletes ability to turn their body with increasing speed is a prerequisite for hitting and/or throwing a ball or other implement further.

The Bad News

If the athlete misses one of these critical speed development windows, Dr. Balyi’s perspective is that the athlete will never reach their genetic potential. This means they will never turn as fast as they could, (they will never hit or throw a ball or other implement as far as they could), if they learned to develop turn speed in these designated speed development windows.

Skill Over-Emphasis

In the US, the tendency for many parents is to push their young developing athletes into sport specialization at too young of an age; focusing too much on the development of sport-specific skills too early. As a result, the young athlete may indeed develop very refined sport-specific skills (in the movement skills of the specific sport they practice or play). However, from a speed development perspective, there is a down-side…the developing young athlete may improve their skills, but at the expense of not ever reaching their genetic potential for how fast they can turn their body and ultimately then, how fast, far or hard they can hit and/or throw a ball or other implement.

Sport skills should be the major emphasis in the window of time between the critical speed development windows show above for boys and girls. Specifically, boys should focus on skill development from ages 10-12 and for girls from ages 9-10, respectively.

The Take-Home Message

So in case the message isn’t yet clear, developing young athletes need to develop speed in critical windows of time while they are young, so their nervous system and body will be able to reach their genetic potential in sports which require speed. Specifically, in rotational sports this means athletes must develop the ability to turn and turn with speed if they want to ever be able to throw the 90+ mph fast ball; hit the golf ball 300+ yards, crush a volleyball etc…

Feeling Impulsive?

The nerves make the muscles work as tiny bits of electrical impulses travel down the nerves…however with young athletes their nerves are bare.

When an athlete ties to perform a new movement, specific nerves (which run from the brain to the specific muscles used in the new movement) are often bare or in a simple sense “uninsulated”.

Myelin Sheath

Technically the body’s nerve insulation is called myelin.

Repetition

As the athlete repeats the same movement over-and-over (repetition), the specific nerves being used (to make the select muscles work and make the specific coordinated body movement occur) change. They become insulated (with myelin)!

Each time the movement occurs, the tiny little impulses of electricity travel over the same nerve to the same muscles, the nerve responds by “wrapping” the body’s own insulation around the nerves.

Greased Lightening!

As more insulation wraps around the nerve, the impulses travels at faster speeds; making the movement more coordinated and faster!

Slow Down

If you want to accelerate learning (wrapping of the nerves), the fastest way to learn a new movement is to perform the movement super-slow. When a person slows the movement way down, they can feel and see the correct and in-correct movement occurring.

Arm Wires

As is typical for many developing young athletes, (since they have used their arms muscles over-and-over, especially in hitting and throwing), they have wrapped a lot of insulation around the nerves feeding the arm and shoulder muscles. So they are very good at getting their arm to work in hitting and throwing motions…

Pelvic Wires

In rotational hitting movements, when an athlete is trying to learn to turn the pelvis before the turn of the shoulders (spine) and the hitting arm, they often have difficulty sensing how to turn their pelvis. This is because their wires (nerves) that run from their brains to the muscles around the pelvis are bare.

As they repeat super-slow pelvic turning movements, they will accelerate the wrapping of the body’s insulation around the nerves feeding the pelvic muscles.

Preferential Treatment

The brain will choose the insulated nerves over the uninsulated nerves! This means when an athlete tries to learn a new movement pattern (which uses uninsulated nerves), the brain will typically choose the insulated nerves which means it will just use the arm versus the pelvis…

So until the athlete has insulated the new nerves that feed the pelvis (has performed enough repetitions of super-slow pelvic turns), the brain and body will want to revert back to using the insulated arm movements without the pelvis leading the motion.

Practice Does Make Perfect!

In-time, as the nerves (feeding the pelvic muscles) becomes wrapped with greater levels of insulation (myelin), the athlete will be able to make the correct pelvic-initiated movements occur easier, faster, more coordinated and automatic!

Muscle memory is a term often used in conversations regarding the development of skill mechanics such as hitting or throwing. For example, golfers will often say that they need to develop the “muscle memory” to repeat their new golf swing.

In the Brain not Muscles

Fact is that muscle memory really is not memory in the muscles…it’s in the brain and nervous system!

When a person develops a new movement pattern, say for example an athlete is trying to swing their arm or a golf club or baseball bat in a new and different way, the movement of the body creates a new set of instructions which are stored in the brain.

As they perform this new movement, tiny sensors in the muscles, tendons and joints sense or feel the the stretch of muscles and movements of the joints as the body performs the new movement.

The sensors in the muscles and joints are connected to the brain through various nerves that run from the muscles and joints up through the spinal cord to the brain. Like a power cord, these nerves carry tiny little electrical signals from the muscles and joints to the brain.

Once these tiny electrical signals arrive at the brain, the brain makes sense of what new movement the body is performing. If the movement is repeated enough times, the brain will create a memory of the body movement and store the memory in the brain.

Movement Instructions

This stored memory is basically a set of instructions which tells the body (the muscles and joints) how to perform this same movement again.

When you want to perform this new movement again, you think about the movement and the brain goes and “pulls up” the stored set of movement instructions from storage in the brain.

Once the brain has pulled up or thought about the instructions, the brain will rapidly send tiny little bits of electrical signals from the brain, back down through the spinal cord to the specific muscles needed to perform the specific movement you’re thinking of or wanting to perform.

Muscles are Dumb!

The muscles really just do what the brain and nervous system tells them to do…so they’re kind of dumb!

So this is what muscle memory really is; not a memory stored in the muscles, but a stored set of body movement instructions stored in the brain.

Sports skills such as hitting or throwing are physical movements…

Without the correct muscle memory, it doesn’t matter how fit, how strong, or how flexible an athlete is…performance of the hitting skill will not improve significantly until the athlete learns to physically perform the correct body movements…

To accelerate gains in hitting performance – first develop the muscle memory or motor-skill, then add functional strength and flexibility to that specific body movement!