{"id":563,"date":"2020-12-15T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-15T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/reports\/keiser-webinar-modern-athletes-are-changing-so-how-are-you-adapting\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T05:12:04","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T05:12:04","slug":"keiser-webinar-modern-athletes-are-changing-so-how-are-you-adapting","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/keiser-webinar-modern-athletes-are-changing-so-how-are-you-adapting\/","title":{"rendered":"Keiser Webinar: Modern Athletes Are Changing, so How Are you Adapting?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\n Dec 15, 2020 <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>Articles<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t

Keiser Webinar: Modern Athletes Are Changing, so How Are you Adapting?<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n \n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Category<\/div>\n Human Performance<\/a> <\/div>\n
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Exploring the modern athlete\u2019s evolving approach to personal development with the LA Dodgers, LA Clippers and Keiser.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

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A Leaders Performance Institute article brought to you in partnership with<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe have asset value in our players and we\u2019re going to do everything we can to maximise that value and make sure they can reach their potential,\u201d says Brandon McDaniel, the Director of Player Development at the World Series-winning Los Angeles Dodgers.<\/h4>\n
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By John Portch<\/h6>\n

\u201cOne of the reasons that we\u2019re really successful with the Dodgers is that we dive into what makes that athlete really good and ultimately work to build the strengths and minimise the risks.\u201d<\/p>\n

McDaniel was speaking during this Keiser Webinar, which explored the modern athlete’s desire for greater autonomy in their personal development and what that means for them and their organisation before contemplating the future of performance. Joining McDaniel on camera were Ty Sevin, Director of Human Performance, Education & Research at Keiser, Daniel Shapiro, Head of Strength & Conditioning, Los Angeles Clippers, and the session\u2019s host Steve Gera, the Co-Founder of Gains Group. Watching the conversation were 150 attendees drawn from members of the Leaders Performance Institute as well as a selection of high performance practitioners from across the globe.<\/p>\n

The following is a summary of their main observations and we encourage all Leaders Performance Institute members to check out the full session here<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n

What precipitated <\/b><\/strong>the<\/b><\/strong>\u00a0evolution of modern athlete?<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n

While the pandemic has seen athletes taken on greater autonomy in their personal development, the trend has been noticeable for more than a decade. In part, it stems from the athletes themselves, but it also stems from organisations, who have transitioned from seeing their rosters or squads as \u2018global\u2019 teams to treating them as individual assets.<\/p>\n

McDaniel says that the changes he has noted in North American team sports during the past 10-20 years have been inspired by European and Australian sport. Major League Baseball is just one league that now approaches each athlete individually. \u201cWe need to find a way to make that live in harmony with the goal of winning a world championship every year,\u201d he says of the challenge that presents. \u201cWe develop and maintain our athletes as we look at each one individually, not from a team view.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of this increased individualisation, Shapiro says it\u00a0stems from the increasing sophistication of sports science and tracking technology; in a sport such as basketball where rosters are comprised of just 15 players, the individualised approach has taken hold. The high performance staff at NBA teams have proliferated and that means athletes are afforded more individualised programmes and feedback. He says: \u201cAthletes increasingly have access and are being exposed to strength training at an earlier age and they all now have their own personal trainer. That\u2019s involved where you\u2019ve got to do a lot more communication in transitioning from what they\u2019ve been doing to what you\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sevin addressed the question from his experience as a strength coach working in Olympic sport and how it differed from his time competing in track & field at college. First he offered an insight into the different ways in which athletes can be tracked and monitored in an increasingly data-driven era. \u201cWe have numbers for everything, we track everything; we do auto-regulation and workouts; we have velocity and power-based training, we monitor their sleep, we have heartrate variability tests to determine whether we\u2019re in the sympathetic or parasympathetic system; we have hormone panels to test testosterone levels.\u201d<\/p>\n

With athletes exposed to individualisation at ever younger ages, he says that the coach has a crucial role in disseminating information to athletes. He believes that\u00a0Olympic success, for example, is defined by\u00a0the information that one\u00a0can gather over a four-year cycle. \u201cIt\u2019s a pull and tug so that the athletes don\u2019t get so much information they are overwhelmed, and at end of the day, you have to use your skills on a daily basis as a coach and keep them involved in the process.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ensuring the right support around the athletes<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n

Sevin says: \u201cThe relationship you build with an athlete is going to determine your success. Of the athlete. You have to build their personality and give them confidence in what they\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

On that note, McDaniel stresses the role of strength coaches and performance staff as \u201cfacilitators\u201d. He says: \u201cIt forced me to go outside and see what our guys were doing. That\u2019s when the trips started to our players\u2019 hometowns, to meet their hometown trainer, to invite them into the building to understand what made them tick.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom a fitness and S&C perspective, I became a facilitator and stopped writing so many programmes and transitioning those programmes from things they were doing with their people, blend stuff they were doing in their offseason into the in-season.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we make them part of the process that takes care of a lot of the quality assurance so that they don\u2019t feel they need to be in a battle with us or we\u2019re fighting their attention.\u201d He also stressed the importance of compatible training, as you can prescribe a programme in the weight room that takes away from what makes them good out on the field.<\/p>\n

Similarly to McDaniel, Shapiro spoke at length about what he calls the \u201cart of the relationship\u201d, particularly as the players he works with are not always familiar with high performance training, nutrition, recovery etc.<\/p>\n

He says: \u201cI have to step out of my comfort zone and modify my training to that athlete and be more specific.\u201d Movement training comprises much of his work as the analytics demonstrate it is improving athlete performance out on the court. Shapiro will visit players in their hometowns across the globe and get to know family members or relatives or people whom they employ as personal trainers. In terms of quality assurance, he perceives his role more as an educator when the athlete steps out of the Clippers\u2019 building. He adds: \u201cWe do our best to quality assure, but it\u2019s got to be on the athlete because they\u2019ve got to hire the people they trust the most and it might not be the person I suggest; it could be the person they grew up with. It\u2019s getting better because of our improved education and training facilities as well as the accessibility of information.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Keiser, Sevin will work with strength coaches to apply his organisation\u2019s evidence-based approach\u00a0with to their existing training methodology without \u201cthrowing everything out the window\u201d. He says: \u201cMy job is to help you with your toolbox to get better tools. Take injury prevention: what is injury prevention? From my perspective, it\u2019s getting the five biomotor abilities to work together; you can handle agility at high forces, low forces, high velocity, low velocity. That\u2019s where the holistic approach to coaching comes in.\u201d<\/p>\n

How do you view the development journey of an athlete?<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n

McDaniel was the first to tackle this topic. \u201cThe first question I ask is what makes this guy really good? What things on the field does he do; what attributes? That gives me the chance to plan out the next few years or however long we might have him and how those skills might diminish.\u201d The eventual programme will depend on if a player\u2019s game is based on speed or power, in which case McDaniel will dial up those elements, or if it\u2019s more to do with hand-to-eye coordination, which enables a greater focus on the fitness side.<\/p>\n

The movement screen is also a conversation starter, where he can delve into playing positions movements on the field, how coaches like to use a certain player and, of course, areas such as nutrition, which both McDaniel and Shapiro describe as \u2018religion\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat gives me a snapshot of who the athlete has been,\u201d says McDaniel, \u201cand now I have an idea of what we can expect from him out on the field. We learn about them and get educated in how they move; why they move, what their strategies are when they play the game. When the season\u2019s over we can attack those areas and start over in those trainable categories before they start baseball activity so we can make substantial changes to their body.\u201d<\/p>\n

Athletes can be influenced by their peers, a matter that Sevin cautions against. He says: \u201cThe downside of the information on the internet. Just because someone was great and doing something, that wasn\u2019t the cause of what enabled them to be good and that\u2019s why I always say we need a team that is coach-driven, athlete-centred, and results-based. The United States Olympic Committee says \u2018science-based\u2019 but I say \u2018results-based’ because science only proves things to be successful five to ten years after it happened. There was a lot of things in the early 90s and 2000s that coaches did that were successful and there was no reasoning that science said it should be successful, and now it is.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a reason and method to doing every exercise and if it doesn\u2019t have a direct cause to improve performance, unless they just love doing it and there\u2019s no risk; it could be something to change the monotony, but really the reasoning behind the exercise must be more important than the exercise itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cUltimately trying to get people to live up to their genetic potential; you\u2019re trying to get every ounce of talent out of them. The amount of genetic talent you have is more powerful than anything we do in our facility.\u201d<\/p>\n

Where is individualised training going?<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n

There was a consensus from the panel that testing and evaluating will continue to achieve greater accuracy. In basketball specifically, Shapiro predicts an increase in skill analytics. He says: \u201cIf Player A can shoot at this angle and this distance from the rim, they\u2019re going to make 97% of their shots. So everyone wants to make sure we get to that specificity. We\u2019re adding and the analytics of the skill of shooting as well as having a body that can put itself into that position to give it the proper angle; the combination of those two are interesting in a skilled sport.\u201d<\/p>\n

In baseball, McDaniel predicts that we will not see an increase in data but a greater understanding of how it is used. \u201cIt won\u2019t be measuring any more, it will be making sure of the things we need to know for interventions, the things we should be attacking to improve performance,\u201d he says. \u201cI really like the fact we\u2019re going to narrow that scope and understand what makes every athlete tick mentally and physically and find more streamlined ways to communicate and motivate them and ultimately give them the objective information they need with the strategy that this is what it\u2019s going to take to be great.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTraining is training,\u201d says Sevin. \u201cAs long as you understand the movement patterns that they\u2019re getting we\u2019ll always need the ability of a coach to put those key performance indicators on to make that information, but where I see us going in the next five years is [towards the increased use of] artificial intelligence; it\u2019s going to play a role.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe role of strength coach will not go away but I think we\u2019ll be more consultant-based, more analytical-based, research-based to teach the computer what it needs to know. It can go through so much more data in a quicker time, so we get autoregulation. In five years, we\u2019ll do a workout and be able to capture kinetic and kinematic markers and the programme is going to tell us what our best bet or where we should go in the next workout. It\u2019s going to be ultimate in individualisation. But it scares me to death as we\u2019ve talked about the relationships and the art of coaching and there\u2019s a movement away from that and I think that\u2019s scary as a coach.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe investment of a coach and athlete working together, when you find that trust, is what wins championships.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Download the latest Performance Special Report<\/strong>,\u00a0The New Now: Navigating High Performance During an Ongoing Pandemic<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 featuring a selection of insights collected from practitioners around the globe as we all continue through these unprecedented times.<\/p>\n