There have been many name changes, many new products, and many services provided through Sports Speed, Etc. over the years but one thing has never changed…Education!

Sometimes I have to shake my head and just laugh it off when I have people commenting on how they didn’t like a DVD because there wasn’t enough drills in it.

I could agree if I promoted my products simply as sources for more drills. There is nothing wrong with this approach as long as you state the purpose. But I have always stated my products are about content, purpose, strategies of learning and teaching, and how to assess movement using your visual cues.

Teaching, to me, has gone downhill over the years. I don’t only mean in the fitness field, I mean in schools and colleges. It is becoming more about testing and comparing rather than learning and discovering.

I personally love to discover why my athletes move and how they move. I want to roll my sleeves up and coach the heck out of them. To share what I have learned with an athlete or coach and help them understand it is a thrill to me. Why others don’t love this is hard for me to understand, especially when they have chosen to be a fitness instructor or coach. Isn’t that the role, to want to teach and support learning?

I want you to sit back for 15 minutes and simply look at how the fitness industry and academic industry are getting very similar. There are lots of standardized tests which mean time spent on making participants better for the test. There is not a lot of time for exploration and discovery. It is very strict and orderly. I am not going to say being orderly is bad, but with the younger populations, part of learning is self discovery.

Look at the fitness industry and how dominated we are becoming by the books that have 200 abdominal exercises, and the speed books with 100 ways to use a ladder. Once again, these are not bad. As a matter of fact they are great resources. But what should always come first is the foundation of true understanding of how to move, how to run faster, how to cut and change direction better and what to look for when athletes are not doing it correctly. We need to learn how to cue athletes better. We should know how to break a skill down when an athlete is struggling so they can be built back up. We need to understand before we start teaching. It is much like shooting darts at a bull’s-eye while in the dark.

Sports Speed, Etc has been about education because I have been about education. I suppose I should use the word learning. I am more of a proponent of learning than education. The reason I say this is because, to me education has become more about reaching the grade, rather than the journey, process, and true knowledge.

So, if you every thought about purchasing a product from Sports Speed, Etc or any other resource, but didn’t because it didn’t have enough drills or exercises in it please think again. The knowledge you gain will empower you to create thousands of drills and exercises because you will now have a purpose.