One Read For Friday: An Article Dissection

This Friday instead of suggesting five reads, I am going to take one read and dissect it. The article is Purdue's Basketball's Fitness Guru Packs Heavy For The Road -- WSJ. If you are not a Wall Street Journal subscriber, it is probably behind the paywall. But I hope to quote some key passages below so you can get the idea of what the article says.

This article is about Coach Josh Bonhotal, the director of Sports Performance at Purdue University. I think it is an important article to examine because it illustrates the direction of where many major universities are going with Sports Performance.

Coach Bonhotal is thinking about every aspect of the athletes outside of the court life. His job is literally to help Purdue athletes be"fueled, rested and energized." When the team travels, he takes "as many as four bags" of equipment. On flights he gives each player a snack bag of "grass fed beef jerky, nuts and applesauce in a squeeze pouch." These are nutrient dense foods and, by eating them, the players get some great nutrition and avoid the temptation of chips or sweets.

Sticking with the food, before games Coach Bonhotal mixes a concoction made with a lower calorie and lower sugar type of Gatorade, beet root juice, and a complex carbohydrate powder called UCan. Some of the athletes don't like the taste but there is some research to suggest that some of these products could give an athlete a 1-2% performance improvement.

Post game there are Gatorade rehydration products, protein powders and tart cherry juice all of which has some studies show aid in the bodies recovery process.

Coach Bonhotal also provides a variety of pre-game and post game tools for warm-up and cool-down. These include the jump ropes, resistance bands, stretch cords, foam rollers, PVC pipe. repurposed plastic discs and massage sticks.

All of this is on top of Coach Bonhotal's primary function which is to "design strength and conditioning workouts to keep Purdue's wide ranging players -- from 5 foot 10 to 7 foot 2 -- in top form and even getting stronger over the season." Each player has their own personally designed program based on their "experience, strength and current health."

Performance Coach's like Coach Bonhotal now spend so much more time with the athletes than even much of the coaching staff that one of the key aspects of their jobs is to also support players psychologically. As Coach Bonhotal says in the article "You get in the player's ear and talk to him about, 'You're doing more to prepare right now than your opponent."

Although not mentioned in the article, I would imagine that Coach Bonhotal or the training staff at Purdue likely have some way of monitoring their athletes sleep too.

On one level, I love reading about this, and I steal ideas from articles like this one for our athletes. When we go to the state track meet every year, Coach Dachille and I have a check list of equipment very like what Coach Bonhotal has to support our athletic performancers. If a lot is riding on the performance and outcome of games, all of this seems perfectly reasonable. But I still have some reservations.

Here are mine.

Does all this support work in conflict with the goal of building athletes who are adaptable and self-reliant in the competitive cauldron? An article like this seems to reflect a sports culture where there are almost no constraints. I happen to think some constraints are good for athletes and programs to get stronger, to develop true cultures of excellence.

Does the emphasis on products like beet root juice and tart cherry juice and other concoctions lead to the thinking that their is a supplement or silver bullet out there that will lead to improved performance? Are you actually creating dependencies by this type of practice. What happens on the day there is no beet root juice available. Can the athlete adapt? or will they struggle because something very small is missing from their routine.

What is the outcome here? If it is merely about sports performance -- wins and losses -- is Purdue compromising its grander mission as an educational institution. The average student will not get a snack of grass fed beef jerky to support their daily performance. But the basketball players do. Why? Because of the revenue basketball produces for the school and its brand.

Ultimately, the article seems to reflect a high concern for athletic performance, but where is the concern for young people as they progress through one of the trickiest times in life, transitioning from the home to independence.

Supporting that transition as coaches is clearly a balancing act. I certainly would buy all these products for my child if it might make them healthier and happier. But I want them to ultimately know that it isn't about the performance.

I heard the following recently from the track and field coach Dave Smith of Oklahoma State University.  "What we talk about all the time is people who do excellent things, people who are the greatest in any field aren’t the ones who are doing it for a contract, or a scholarship or the money, or because it's their job. They do it because they have a dream, they have a passion, and they commit to following that passion."

As I have said before in this blog, what we want to do is help our students find that passion, that thing that makes them excited to come to school and eventually to work so they lead full, flourishing and fulfilling lives.