The question to Chris Gillies was: How does he get the best out of his athletes in the weight room? However, the real question is: How do the athletes get the most out of their own workouts?
“What you put into it and how hard you work, it is how much you get out of it,” Gillies comments about how every athlete has to bring in a standard for themselves and have the mentality each day to get better. As a coach, it makes his job much more difficult if the athlete does not reciprocate. Gillies has a profound understanding that once the athletes commit to bettering themselves every day, whenever they step foot in the weight room, he is able to do his job efficiently and effectively.
Once the athletes buy into the mentality, Gillies gets to work. Every sport is different, so indeed some approaches are different, yet Gillies creates consistency across the board for all the athletes. For example, with rotational sports such as golf, Gillies states, “We know that there is a correlation between how high their box jump is to how far they can hit a ball with their driver.”
Working on an athletes “vertical force” for golf is common to look over, but Gillies understands the dynamics of the sport in order for them to apply what they do in the weight room into their game on the golf course.
Not only is the weight room directly applied during the season but also during the off-season. The off-season is where the weight room becomes a place of growth. The athletes’ main objective, and Gillies’ main objective, is to become better physically and mentally in order to have more of an opportunity to play when the regular season comes back around. Gillies emphasizes this by saying, “The number one idea is your performance in competition.”
Ultimately, his overall goal in the weight room is to set an athlete up for what they do on their playing field. How an athlete achieves this growth, how they put themselves available for “selection,” is the mentality, the intention and, of course, the help from Coach Gillies.
Once the workout is finished, however, it then goes back into the hands of the athlete with the influence of Gillies: recovery. This leads to next week’s discussion of How to Get the Best out of Athletes- Recovery Edition.
Stay tuned!
