I strongly believe in educating my athletes as to
why we’re training the way we are.

Why what we’re doing is going to make them faster.

And I strongly encourage them to ask questions so
it makes sense, not just blindly follow what I tell
them to do like all their other coaches.

In a way I consider myself to be like Morpheus, a
character in my favorite movie, The Matrix. My athletes
are like Neo, the main character.

(If you don’t know what I’m talking about you should
really go rent this movie.)

There’s a scene in the movie where Morpheus offers
Neo a choice…

Take the blue pill and the story ends. Neo wakes up
and believes whatever he wants.

Take the red pill and, as Morpheus says, “You stay
in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole
goes. Remember — all I am offering is the truth,
nothing more.”

Invariably most of my athletes take the red pill.

And I start telling them the truth.

Before long they start to see just how purposeless and
ineffective the training they’ve gotten in the past
was.

The more success they have, the more questions they
ask. The more time they are willing to commit to
getting better.

The results speak for themselves.

It’s a double edged sword, however.

Once athletes know the truth about real training, it’s
very difficult to go back and buy into what some of
their other coaches are telling them because they
know it makes no sense.

That it’s not making them better. It’s probably even
erasing some of the progress they’ve made.

After all, I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest
that 8 out of 10 youth/high school coaches don’t know
very much about speed, strength and conditioning.

At least not in my experience.

Many people still believe that speed can’t be taught
or significantly improved.

Oh it can, believe me.

In fact, this winter I accomplished something in 14
*weeks* that hadn’t been done in the 22 *years* prior
to my arrival.

That’s right, 22 years. Not since 1986.

And I’m not saying this out of arrogance or as an
indictment of previous coaching efforts.

Because numbers are objective facts.

Tomorrow I’m going to tell you exactly what that is
and how you can directly benefit from my success.

So keep an eye out for my email tomorrow.

Remember, you can ignore tomorrow’s email
(take the blue pill) and believe whatever you want
to believe.

Or you can take the red pill. Because like Morpheus,
all I’m offering is the truth, nothing more…

Until tomorrow,

Latif Thomas aka Morpheus

------------------------------

Spread the Word:

 digg this  del.icio.us  Technorati  Blogmemes  Ask Jeeves
 Furl  Reddit  Rojo  Simpy  Spurl  Socialize It
 Earthlink  Google  Netscape  Windows Live  Yahoo

------------------------------

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 4th, 2008 at 6:29 pm and is filed under Speed Training . You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.