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First XV Coach Cast Episode 12- Sports Data Overload
7 Plays29 days ago
It's a new Coach Cast! Bringing it back to a subject I've touched on before and putting it into a different context, sports. Specifically high school sports and testing athletes for them just for data collecting purposes. Have a listen as I babble on about all the reasons to skip the testing and do more productive things instead.
Make sure you hit subscribe & share on your favorite podcast app and follow me on Instagram- JDykeFXV
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Transcript
Introduction to Episode Theme
00:00:01
Jarrod Dyke
Hello again, everyone. Welcome back to the First 15 Coachcast. Been a minute since I've done one of these, but today I've decided that I've got a little bit of time on my hands and I would like to yap into your ear a little bit. So thank you for joining me.
00:00:14
Jarrod Dyke
So I had a previous episode I did on this about strength coaches and trainers and the overuse of data.
Critique of Data Overuse in High School Sports
00:00:23
Jarrod Dyke
Well, I'm going to go with a similar theme, except...
00:00:26
Jarrod Dyke
as you can probably guess i'm going to go towards more towards sport coaches i have my high school season that i'm about to coach coming up so that's got my brain turning over in that manner and of course i'm seeing other people and other some athletes online just posting their test scores quote unquote and what what people are doing for pre-season and stuff like that so it's It's top of mind for me, so I do want i want to touch on it just a little bit because, as you can probably guess, I have an opinion on it. Shocker of the day, I know.
Relationship Building vs. Fitness Tests
00:01:03
Jarrod Dyke
So when it comes to high school sports, and as I mentioned before, strength coaches over over you and trainers are a little over-reliant on data. it's tenfold for sport coaches especially high school sports and to me it's a little absurd it's it it's almost ridiculous it's borderline ridiculous and really what I'm thinking of is I don't need to know a max bench a max squad a max deadlifts or or anything in in that in the gym I don't need to know
00:01:36
Jarrod Dyke
ah how good you are on a certain fitness test at the high school level. It's not my concern, especially where, unless you've but unless you've been playing, unless you're in an environment where, in a sport where there's a lot of people that, there's a lot of athletes that are coming to you that have played that sport before.
00:01:59
Jarrod Dyke
Now there's obviously a pretty good list of sports that kids might, might likely have played before they get to high school and to these high school teams. However, it doesn't exclude them. They should still, this, this point that I'm about to make doesn't exclude them.
00:02:19
Jarrod Dyke
The time spent on And there's two points to this. um The time spent on things like fitness tests are so much better spent on ah building up relationships, skill building, and making sure that people know what your intentions are with the season.
00:02:42
Jarrod Dyke
I guess maybe that last one's kind of a little ambiguous, but that's my that's certainly what I do.
00:02:50
Jarrod Dyke
The other part of the whole thing is Testing athletes at this age can just can do a couple things. They can put far too much pressure on them than necessary. there' They already feel the pressure from high school sports for whatever reason.
00:03:08
Jarrod Dyke
And that's that is up to the coach to ah try and alleviate some of those pressures and let them know that it's just a sport. Relax. So if you can do that well, okay, maybe you have some wiggle room to go out there and and do a fitness test.
Coaching Rugby: Enjoyment and Gradual Conditioning
00:03:24
Jarrod Dyke
But also, if you're looking at certainly sports like rugby where I have athletes that come in and have never seen the sport before, haven't touched a ball before the first day of practice, I would be more interested in making sure they enjoyed their first few days of practice, have some fun, and then maybe do a little bit of um conditioning,
00:03:49
Jarrod Dyke
at the end of practice, before practice the beginning of practice, depending on what your ideas are and what your intentions are. Because I don't i don't want to do an all-day fitness test or an all-practice fit fitness test or anything of the like.
00:04:05
Jarrod Dyke
Because let's face it, some of these kids are going to feel pretty crap about themselves and they're going to leave the sport after one of those days. And I would certainly be more interested in keeping as many ah athletes in my team as possible.
00:04:21
Jarrod Dyke
One, because it does us a good thing down the road, but two, because I want to give them the chance to have some fun. I don't want them to be done after one to two days of the sport.
00:04:32
Jarrod Dyke
That's, that doesn't do anybody any good.
00:04:39
Jarrod Dyke
So there's, there's that.
00:04:43
Jarrod Dyke
And it's just, it's so much easier to figure out if your intention is let's figure out if someone's fit, I can tell you someone's fit by certainly a couple of the conditioning drills I do. And I try to do only conditioning ah at the beginning of preseason and just to build up the lungs a little bit because not every one of the players that are coming to are my team are coming into this having done a lot of offseason work. Some of them have just...
00:05:15
Jarrod Dyke
been a bunch of lazy bones and that's how it is so I gotta at least see what we're dealing with for our baseline so I will do some conditioning but I can tell you that there is one or two of the um conditioning sometimes I call it fitness whatever you wish to term you wish to apply to it one or two of the fitness drills exercises whatever word that I do and I can tell you within probably two to three rounds of what we're doing, who's fit and who's not.
00:05:50
Jarrod Dyke
And I don't need more than that. I don't need a number in front of my face to tell me someone's fit. And I also can tell you what they were last year. if it's a returning player, I can tell you what they were last year and what they were the year before.
00:06:03
Jarrod Dyke
you know Some of them were way far back in the pack in some of these drills, and they'll creep up they'll creep forward. You'll see it. not If you're paying attention, it's not hard to see. So that's my other point about the whole thing.
00:06:17
Jarrod Dyke
You don't need tests to tell you what's going on with these players in terms of their fitness and their strength. you You can observe it when you're doing things.
Observational Assessment of Returning Players
00:06:29
Jarrod Dyke
um Rugby is a contact sport, so strength does matter. But I can see who's getting bounced and who's getting put on their butt very easily and who's a problem to put down.
00:06:41
Jarrod Dyke
That doesn't take much more than a ah few glances. uh during some contact drills to say yep all right and this this player's strong let's let's uh let's keep that in mind so i i'm i'm certainly not one that sits there and overly analyzes what happens and for me i know i think I do a pretty good job of keeping tabs on what what some of the returning players are doing in the off season.
00:07:12
Jarrod Dyke
A lot of them will do off season strength conditioning with me. And if not, then I usually try and look for an update. And if I don't get an update, these athletes know they're leaving it to chance on me and what my opinion of them is gonna be coming into the season.
00:07:29
Jarrod Dyke
I do try and wipe the slate clean, but let's be honest, I'm human. If I haven't seen the person all off season, and I don't know what they've been up to, I i have to just start with a very neutral idea as opposed to someone I've seen working their butt off all offseason.
00:07:46
Jarrod Dyke
That is going to put them on a different level in my head. um I'm human, and i I don't try to fight it too often. And should an athlete that I didn't see all offseason, didn't hear from all offseason, prove to me that they actually were up to you know some good things,
00:08:04
Jarrod Dyke
Awesome. Great. that should That will i will that'll come out real quick in the first you know three to five days of of practice. And I have no problem with sitting there nodding my head and saying, all right, he's he's been doing something or she's been doing something. No no issue with that in my brain.
Ensuring Enjoyment in Youth Sports
00:08:22
Jarrod Dyke
And that's so that is just where my or my head is at with that. So in summary... As a high school coach, you don't need to do off-season testing, and I get it.
00:08:35
Jarrod Dyke
some Some teams think they're in a professional environment, and there's probably way too much.
00:08:45
Jarrod Dyke
It's being taken way too seriously, that whatever program you're at. So be it. I can't do anything about that. That's how it is. ah But also... The point of youth sport is for these players to have a bit of fun.
00:09:03
Jarrod Dyke
These sports are finite for so many of these athletes. They will not see this sport again or any sport again after high school. So to me, in the end, the whole point of this is this needs to be ah time that they remember for good things, for fun,
00:09:24
Jarrod Dyke
Yes, they're going to have to work hard. There's no denying that that's part of sport. I get that. But there's a level of which we can just put a cap on it and say, all right, the work's being done. i don't need to push you to your absolute limits because I know that or I don't need to push you to a limit where i think you might quit because there are other ways to mentally prepare someone for something like that.
00:09:49
Jarrod Dyke
That's not what I'm trying to do here as a high school youth coach. It's way too much emphasis on trophies and stuff like that. I think I've talked about that before. I want them to have a
Limitations of Fitness Tests and Holistic Approach
00:10:00
Jarrod Dyke
positive experience. I want them to enjoy the sport I'm coaching in particular.
00:10:03
Jarrod Dyke
And I also want them to walk away with a good feeling about, you know, they have, they have a group that they belong to. So I would prefer those things as opposed to worrying about what data point this person represents and,
00:10:18
Jarrod Dyke
It's always so much more than that. It's what's going on. We see it all the time too in sports. There are players that don't test well in XYZ. You know, the the the NFL combine, which I think just happened is the perfect example of it. Like it's a test for college athletes going in and trying to be professionals.
00:10:38
Jarrod Dyke
And it doesn't, it doesn't predict that much. Honestly, it doesn't predict anything super well. Some of the fastest people that have ever, you know, participated in the, and the NFL combine have not turned into really good players or, and some of the best test takers aren't necessarily the best students or the best, you know, members of society society. So we don't need to put so much emphasis on that. We don't need to put so much reliance on that.
00:11:07
Jarrod Dyke
ah I've seen my own, with my own two eyes, players that probably wouldn't have done well in fitness tests or strength tests or whatever, but man, they were,
00:11:18
Jarrod Dyke
tremendous players and i would never have dreamed of putting them on the bench if know regardless they did something against team rules or something like that but that and it's you know and sometimes it's just what's going on between the ears it's that you know that top part of the the body there that tends to take care of a lot of things and the I can't tell what's going on up there because of a fitness test or a strength test.
00:11:46
Jarrod Dyke
It doesn't matter.
Conclusion: Observation Over Data
00:11:47
Jarrod Dyke
It really doesn't. There's so much more to it. And yes, there are special human beings that can do it all. I just want to see... what they got a little bit with both, which I can do without putting them through a super strenuous test of any sort.
00:12:04
Jarrod Dyke
And I also want them to have fun. So that's really where I'm at when it comes to high school sports and over testing them and trying to gather more data than you really need.
00:12:18
Jarrod Dyke
Let's just watch, observe, see for yourself and let them have, have a good time and let them come away with a positive experience. Cause there's enough negative experiences out there for these athletes that we need to, we need to do a little bit better than that.
00:12:35
Jarrod Dyke
So that's, that's what I have for you today. Those are my thoughts. I do appreciate everyone that listens to this and all feedback I get. So thank you very much everyone for listening to this and I hope you have a great day.
00:12:46
Jarrod Dyke
Be back soon.