Lee Burton: Building on the FMS Performance Pyramid

It’s easy to focus on strengths, but identifying weakness is our job. Lee Burton uses the FMS Performance Pyramid to discuss the foundation of performance.

Excerpted from Gray Cook, Dan John & Lee Burton Essentials of Coaching and Training Functional Continuums 

As we break the FMS performance pyramid down to its core to where we began back in the late 1990s, the idea is to simply determine what needs address­ing with this person.

Where is their weakness?

It’s very easy for all of us in this room to take the athletes, clients and individuals we work with and focus on their strengths. That’s what they’re good at. It’s easy to do that.

It’s easy for the kid who bench presses twice a week to come in and go bench press.

What we’re trying to do here is set baselines and identify the problems.

Identify their weakness. That is our job.

If we can identify their weakness and we do that accurately, that’s going to have a much greater impact on the backend for that individual than focusing in on what they’re good at.

They’re going to do that anyway. You know the kid is going to do bench pressing.

The last thing I’m worried about for a high-school football player is having him bench. He’s going to do it, but what I need to focus on is shoulder mobility, making sure they maintain some things, finding out where their weakness is, finding out where the pain is and address those areas because that’s going to lay down a much better platform in the long run.

That’s hard to do, but it’s what we’re trying to do.


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