You found a new fancy-looking exercise on the ‘gram, so you do it. Then, you have your athletes do it. But you don’t know the exercise’s common technique flaws or how to fix them — all you know is how the person looked and how you felt doing it.

I firmly believe you have to start at the simplest movement that someone can master correctly, and then, over time, progress from that simple movement to the more complex movements. The process is one of progressive skill acquisition.

Training is like traveling; you have to map out the route you want to take in the timeframe you have. For training, planning your mesocycle is a good place to start that journey — you have to understand the basic principle of progressive overload and take your maximum ability to recover into consideration.

Training is more than the squat, bench, and deadlift — especially for a child on the autism spectrum. According to Sheena, bring together observation, communication, scheduling, progression, and motivation, and you’ll have a solid start to a program.

It would’ve been easy to create another brand-new workout with different recreational equipment. But a more powerful lesson rather than starting at ground level in terms of skill, was for the students to observe their strengths and weaknesses and then create a plan to reach a new level of skill mastery.

Core values are something that Jim… well, values. He’s got core values for every aspect of his life, whether it’s the core values he and his wife share, the core values at work, or core values for training. His fifth core value on the list took him eight years to figure out.

I firmly believe you have to start at the simplest movement that you can master correctly and then over time progress from the simple to the more complex movements. Download my basic outline with notes included here.

Stop burying your athletes into the ground and do only as much training as needed for optimal results.