Situation: An athlete maintains perfect form during practice but completely breaks down when fatigued during workouts, creating safety concerns. What do you do?
Solution: During our workouts, we are continuously coaching and cueing athletes, as well as challenging their mechanical threshold. If you notice degradation in movement mechanics and your short cues are ineffective, it will be necessary to have the athlete pause to provide proper rest and allow you to cue them further. If the error continues, you will need to lower the load or scale the workout further. After the workout, it may be beneficial to explain your coaching process to the athlete to help them understand the mechanics are intended to be maintained when under conditions of fatigue and that it may require more focus.
A strategy to aid with the habit of practicing skill in a fatigue state is to do skill work at low loads and/or lower intensities during the post-workout section of class. For example, following a workout like Fran, you could have athletes to the Burgener warm-up with a PVC pipe or empty barbell as part of the cool-down.
What would you do?
Let us know in the comments.
