by Chris Korfist
You probably know that in addition to being a cofounder of RPR, I am also a high school history teacher. You might not know that I’m also a music aficionado; I’ve been collecting guitars for years. And as with many folks of my generation, The Beatles were my gateway to what music could be. To this day, they’re my favorite band. I’ll come back to this.
I have been teaching high school for 27 years. When I started, there were 3 computers in our large, upper class high school. At that point, the internet existed and some people had access to it, but in our world it was not a “thing.” Three years later, we were the first school in the Chicago area to have the internet and the world wide web. In my training class, I remember that it was cooler to instant message someone rather than “surf the web.” Mostly because search engines didn’t really exist so for the internet to be useful at all, you needed to know the address to go to someones site. To say the least, it did not feel like the “information superhighway” that we’d been promised. As a teacher, the inaccessibility of information meant that my students were inclined to believe what I said (and being a good teacher, I always took that seriously).
From a coaching standpoint, new information being hard to access meant that the coach’s word was gospel. The coach had all the knowledge, and thus the power. The coach was an all-knowing entity.
The World Today Is Fundamentally Different.
Jump ahead 24 years from when we got the internet at our school and there is an incredible amount of information at everyone’s fingertips. The barrier for entry is incredibly low: anyone can become an expert just by putting information “out there” and making it sexy. My son and my students would rather look something up on YouTube and get the simple, two-minute explanation than get a real understanding from someone who has cultivated expertise in a given field. My son has hundreds of hits on his YouTube page for things he has never done before. It’s amazing.
I’m not knocking people’s ability to share their experiences by any means, I’m just highlighting that the world is different now. In this new world, I need to be better as a teacher, as a parent, and as a coach. It’s no longer “what I say goes.” It’s now a matter of giving people a lot of ways to understand something.
It’s incredibly easy to find experts in whatever sport your athletes are playing. It means a coach who knows his players personally has to compete with a stranger on YouTube who’s screaming and pumping his fists. We need to change our approach. In this age of bro science, we need to be able to get our teams to buy into our program over the one they see on the internet. It can’t be just “because I said so.” We have to adopt some of those tactics we see from those YouTube coaches. Our number one advantage is the ability to have our team share an experience where they see and feel an instant difference. It’s why the first thing we do in a Level One clinic is to show a few approaches to get people to buy in.
For me, the best bang-for-the-buck test with high schoolers is the rotation test. The upside of it being the only Wake Up Drill that you need a partner for is that you can pick two of your most influential athletes to participate. I always try and bring up the silent leader of the room and the person who seems the most resistant to learning. The silent leader because you need that person on your side and the most resistant because they tend to have the biggest reaction when they feel a difference. When you do the test, make sure you’re modeling exactly what you want to see. Once they’ve done the wake up drill and you’ve retested, it’s important to let the athlete report what they felt - don’t lead them (as much as you may want to). Ask the room if they saw a difference between the first and second test. Then have the whole team do this with each other and have them report back the differences. I would genuinely be shocked if you don’t see a positive change in more than 90% of your athletes. When they experience that together, they’ll follow you. Usually, doing this test results in a room full of people who are excited to learn. You’ve closed the deal.
Another test that I use regularly, and I’ll even use this in my classroom, is a hamstring flexibility test tied to breathing. For my students, breathing is far and away the most important indicator of how well they’re going to perform in class. Showing a difference in hamstring flexibility just by breathing really brings home how important breath is to everything in their body. The only caveat I have here is that some people have so much flexibility in their hamstrings that this test isn’t meaningful. If you have one of those folks, this test probably won’t matter much to them. No big deal.
Who do I pick for this one? Anyone who says they’re not flexible! Especially (and this is something I see in clinics more than in classrooms) when a bunch of people agree that someone’s not flexible. I’ll have them bend down and touch their toes (or do a hamstring range of motion test on a table), then I’ll have them take a few belly breaths and do the diaphragm wake up drill, then retest that toe-touch. First thing is always for that person to report what they felt, but everyone in the room can see the difference. Then I instruct the whole room to go through this on their own and feel for themselves. Once again, open the conversation and report back, you’ll have a room full of people ready to join you.
It’s not quite the same when JL demo’s this one.
The third test that I use is the lateral sling test. This one works really well because it asks the athlete to engage their lateral chain to stabilize against an external force. Normally, people who have inhibited glute meds will have absolutely nothing to resist this force. I usually pick someone who’s bigger (a skinny guy like me pushing a 300-pound guy over with two fingers is pretty dramatic). In selecting someone, I’ll find someone who sands with their feet turned out wide or who put all their weight into one side when they’re standing. I’ve found those foot positions are compensations for that lack of stability. It’s not that they’re weak, they just don’t have a good strategy to deal with lateral forces. After the reset, the results are usually pretty dramatic. I’ve even seen people get emotional from this because they always felt subconsciously threatened by people on their sides. It’s pretty cool and illustrates the instant changes.
Here’s what I tend not to use in a group. I never use the standing or lying psoas tests - I find they’re too difficult for the athletes to replicate with one another. I also tend not to use the hip extension range of motion and strength tests for the same reason, however with other professionals it’s my number one because everybody’s focused on the glutes and, while I agree about their importance, I just think there’s a different order of operations that will help them even more. They’re fine tests and they have their time and place. In a one-on-one situation, I use these every single time.
My biggest advice - be nice to yourself. Do your best work with the right intentions and don’t get frustrated if you don’t get everybody to buy in. You may be able to address that individual in a one-on-one setting, you may not be able to.
Just remember, not everybody likes The Beatles.