LENKO - Performance and Coaching

1 MORE!

Appreciate all the support from everyone who has come out to support the Titans 💙

It makes a huge difference. You’ll be needed for the next one that’s for certain!

This team is special!

Manchester Titans American Football Club

Everyone loves talking about talent.

Speed.

Strength.

Skill.

Athleticism.

All important.

But there’s another quality coaches value massively.

Can they rely on you?

Can they rely on you to turn up?

Can they rely on you to prepare properly?

Can they rely on you to do your job when you’re tired?

Can they rely on you when the game isn’t going your way?

Can they rely on you to keep your standards when nobody is watching?

Because being a good athlete when everything feels great is easy.

It’s much harder when you’ve had a bad game.

When you’re sore.

When you’re frustrated.

When selection hasn’t gone your way.

When training is hard and progress feels slow.

That’s when your habits and standards actually mean something.

Talent can open doors.

But if you want to keep progressing, become the athlete coaches, teammates and everyone around you KNOW they can rely on.

Not occasionally. Every Week.

Every year I see the same thing.

Athletes spend months in the gym getting stronger, more powerful and better conditioned.

Then the season starts…

And strength training disappears.

Because games are back.

Training gets busier.

You’re carrying a bit more fatigue.

And suddenly the gym becomes the first thing to go.

That makes no sense.

You’ve spent all off-season building physical qualities that help you perform.

Why would you spend the next 6 months watching them disappear?

Your in-season training shouldn’t look exactly like your off-season training.

Volume probably needs to come down.

Exercise selection might change.

Sessions might need to be shorter.

You definitely don’t need to be crawling out of the gym two days before a game.

But you still need exposure to strength.

You still need to produce force.

You still need to move fast.

You still need to give your body a reason to KEEP the qualities you worked so hard to build.

The goal during the season isn’t to smash yourself in the gym.

It’s to maintain the physical qualities that allow you to perform on game day.

Train hard.

But more importantly…

Train with a purpose.

More sessions.

More running.

More gym work.

More mobility.

More recovery.

More extras after training because it feels like you should be doing something.

It all looks like commitment.

And sometimes it is.

But sometimes it’s just more fatigue.

One of the biggest mistakes serious athletes make is assuming that if some training is good, more must be better.

It isn’t.

Your body only adapts to training if you can actually recover from it.

If every session becomes another chance to add more work, eventually something gives.

Performance drops.

You stop progressing.

Small niggles start hanging around.

You feel flat in training.

And the answer usually isn’t another session.

Good training isn’t about doing as much as you can tolerate.

It’s about doing enough of the right work to create the adaptation you want.

Then recovering well enough to actually benefit from it.

More work doesn’t automatically make you a more serious athlete.

Sometimes knowing when enough is enough does.

FYI - I don’t work with ANY lazy athletes…that’s why I don’t worry about the lazy ones 😁