Greetings from sunny AZ! Just wanted to do a super fast Z Health Update on S Phase!
S stands for Sports Phase, so it is time for athletic movement! Whoo ha.
The basis of Z Health is the 9S model
Strength
Stamina
Skill
Sustenance (nutrition)
Suppleness (flexibility/mobility)
Structure
Spirit
Style
Speed
Think of all of those coming off of the athlete in the middle. The job of the coach/trainer to infuse each of those qualities into the athlete to make them better. This may change during each training session! How many qualities do most strength coaches/personal trainers work on during a session/season even?
VISION
A key component to elite performance is vision. Not just your visual acuity (how well can you see the eye chart in the docs office), but beyond that.
We go over many different types of vision such as
Dynamic Visual Acuity
Eye Tracking
Eye Focus/Accommodation
Peripheral Vision
Vergence Flexibility and Stamina
Imagery
Sequencing
Eye-hand and Eye-foot Coordination
So vision is beyond just an eye chart! Think of all the great players like Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, Walter Payton, etc and all of them are described as having great vision. Many times the greats were NOT the best in the weight room. Performance on the field is what matters.
Remember that your eyes are controlled by MUSCLES, therefore, vision can be TRAINED. I have never been able to figure out why most people, even at a very high level, NEVER talk about this fact??
Most Olympic athletes have not even done visual training. We are primarily visual creatures and the nervous system's highest priority (most of the time) is visual. So this has HUGE applications to sport and pain relief!
This also means that if you sucked at any ball sports now or when you were growing up (my hand is up), you probably have a vision issue and many many times IT CAN BE CORRECTED! Trust me, I know first hand the difference is jaw dropping. You will actually ENJOY sports!
Athletics should be a LIFE LONG activity, and the true promise of Z Health is that it can elevate almost anyone to an extremely high level at virtually ANY age! Life does not end a 30, 40, 50 or even beyond 60 years of age!
But, like all things, you need to put your time and reps in and no one will ever do that for you. Then again, was anything that gave a huge sense of accomplishment ever easy?
Movement Training (aka Speed training)
There a trend now for speed camps and speed work galore. Yep, athletes need to be fast, but most of it is not speed in a linear sense (e.g straight line). They need to be taught how to move and do transitions from one position to the next.
The reason R Phase and I Phase are before S Phase is that they teach all the basic movements that are integrated even further in S Phase. To use a language analogy, if you want to learn Spanish, you need to learn the alphabet (letters--R Phase) first. Next put them into words (I Phase--integrated movements) and then sentences (S Phase--larger/gross movements). Without a good foundation, you will have bad movement but it just be a little faster.
Think of putting a larger engine (more muscle) into a car with a bad alignment--no good! You could even argue that with a bigger engine, you are on a path to tear yourself apart even FASTER!
Again, QUALITY over QUANTITY.
So far it has been great and there are still 2 more days to go! Can't wait!
Any questions, let me know.
Rock on
Mike N
