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CHAPTER

2 The Academy

Chapter 2 - The Academy _________________________________________

Introduction ________________________________________________

It was truly one of a kind with no precedent and no imitator. It was an institution of the future that was functioning in the present. An Orwellian adventure into sports science that was easily five decades ahead of any sports complex the world has ever known. I know because I lived and worked there for three solid years. It was simply known as The Academy and there was no better place to be in the early seventies if you were into sports.

The Academy was the brainchild of Ewing Kauffman, the owner of the Kansas City Royals baseball team. Kauffman believed that athletes who had raw physical talent could be turned into major league prospects by scientific means. Thus, athletes were procured for The Academy not on the basis of their baseball experience or talent, but rather on the basis of their physical and psychological prowess. In fact, many of the athletes who were drafted by The Academy had never played a day of baseball in their lives. The Academy, unlike other professional baseball organizations, went after the world’s biggest, strongest, and fastest athletes regardless of what sport they played. In short, they were looking for the best bodies in the world, not the best baseball players.

Once they had the best bodies, they attempted to turn them into the best baseball players in the world. No expense was spared by Kauffman to make his dream a reality. A fifteen million dollar complex was constructed in Sarasota, Florida. The complex consisted of five major league baseball fields, an Olympic-size swimming pool, tennis courts, handball courts, two lakes, living quarters for 125 athletes that were fit for a king, a large cafeteria, ten classrooms, a huge clubhouse, and a scientific sports laboratory that was equaled by none in the Western World. The laboratory had every piece of scientific equipment imaginable related to sports. It was a researcher’s paradise. The Academy was staffed by the best baseball people money could buy, and some of the most renowned sports scientists in the world. Besides the extraordinary facilities and the excellent staff, the athletes at The Academy were absolutely magnificent. They were all giant mesomorphs who could run like the wind and move like lightning. They were intelligent, well-groomed, and well-disciplined. They reminded me of a group of James Bond clones.

Believe me, there was enough power and speed at that Academy that they could have easily fielded a competitive professional football team. But, baseball was their game, and they played it to perfection. In the first three years of their existence, The Academy team won over 90% of their games and three championships. In the process, they set season records for home runs, stolen bases, batting averages, slugging percentages, fielding averages, hits, runs, earned run averages, and wins. This was an amazing feat, especially since The Academy was composed of non-experienced baseball players who competed against professional teams.

Of course, The Academy players had a tremendous advantage over their competitors. They were given extensive physical and mental training well beyond what the professional ballplayers were getting. For example, The Academy had a professional ballerina who taught them flexibility, a fitness coach, a resident psychologist, a vision expert, a sprint coach, a biomechanical analyst, a professional photographer, a kinesiology expert, a physiologist, and a masseur. They also had a coach to help them in each aspect of the game. There was a hitting coach, a pitching coach, a fielding coach, a running coach, a bunting coach, and even a coach’s coach to teach the coaches how to coach.

They also had the advantage of scientific equipment.

Special shoes and suits were designed so that the players could run faster and move easier. Bats and gloves were constructed to meet each individual’s biomechanical needs. Scientific formulas were developed by computers to help take the guesswork out of game strategy. Even the lighting and color schemes used throughout the Academy complex were arranged in an attempt to control behavior. For example, the athlete’s bedrooms were painted with colors and lighted in a manner that was conducive to sleep. The doors were painted with colors that had been scientifically shown to increase motivation, and the recreational rooms and cafeteria were painted and lighted to induce relaxation and comfort. Even the bills on the baseball caps were colored to enhance performance. The Academy left nothing to chance. It was indeed the scientific sports institute of the future, and it was accomplishing its primary purpose to develop inexperienced, raw talent into super human athletes.

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Intellectual Training Was Born ___________________________________________________________________________________

The success that The Academy was having traveled like wildfire throughout the world. Without question, The Academy had proven that scientific innovations in the field of sports (more specifically baseball) could significantly enhance athletic performance. Actually, that finding was not all that surprising. For years, research in the field of psychomotor development had indicated that advances in equipment, pharmacology, nutrition, biomechanics, cybernetics, and psychology could significantly enhance athletic performance. What was surprising though, was the finding that the more information The Academy afforded a ballplayer about the physiological, psychological, and mechanical demands of his position and/or sport, the more likely he was to excel. In other words, there seemed to be a linear relationship between the knowledge an athlete had about his sport and how well he performed. Before you could say, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste,” researchers all over the world started researching the effects of intellectual training on athletic performance. Even I got involved...utilizing 147 male weightlifters at Albany State College, I found a significant increase in weightlifting performance when the subjects were given special intellectual training which dealt with the physical and/or mechanical and psychological aspects of weightlifting. These findings were compared to a control group who received no special attention and who were exposed only to the physical and/or mechanical demands of weightlifting. At the completion of the eight month study, the experimental group not only exhibited superior weightlifting scores, but also a significantly better attitude toward the task at hand.

I certainly wasn’t alone in my findings. The results of similar studies indicate that the more information extended to an athlete about the demands of his sport, the more likely he will excel. The Eastern Bloc countries, namely the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany caught on very quickly. It became a standard requirement in these countries for coaches to expose their athletes to the theory and mechanics of their sport.

According to Vanek and Cratty’s book, Psychology and the Superior Athlete, coaches in the Eastern Bloc countries frequently assign readings to their athletes. At other times, discussions are held and lectures are given by authorities who discuss the psychological or physiological ramifications of the activities in which the athletes are engaged. Also, athletes are frequently exposed to training films in which their own movements are analyzed and compared to those of more proficient performers around the world. These programs consistently revealed that athletes who were intellectually prepared for the demands of competition performed significantly better than athletes who didn’t receive such training.

Although the United States had conducted a prolific amount of research on intellectual training, it wasn’t until recently that a systematic program of intellectual training was incorporated into their Olympic Sports Programs. Even more surprising is the fact that few professional sports teams in America use intellectual training, and to my knowledge, not a single amateur team uses the technique. It’s true that most American athletes do engage in some form of intellectual training. Such training, however, is seldom systematic or detailed. It generally consists of reading non-scientific publications or talking with fellow athletes. Without question, even this type of meta-method is beneficial.

However, a more comprehensive program is necessary to enhance performance significantly. In short, most athletes tend to rely strictly on their physical prowess to perform.

High school coaches and athletes...well, they may be the worst culprits of all. A survey of more than 2,000 amateur high school athletes revealed that less than seven percent of them use a systematic program of intellectual training to enhance their training and more than 90 percent of the aforementioned athletes were not even familiar with

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the term intellectual training. Worse yet, a study conducted in Bela Karolyi emphasized the 1989 by James Elias revealed that high school coaches were less mental aspect of training. knowledgeable than the average physical education instructor when it came to nutrition, biomechanics, sports medicine, sports sociology, and sports psychology. Actually, according to Elias, high school coaches knew little more than how to train physically and spent significantly less time than the aforementioned individuals educating themselves about factors that were directly related to their sport. I believe this is a mistake of significant magnitude.

Although most of us are heirs to the Judeo-Christian ethnic which states in principle that there is a linear relationship between hard work and success, that concept has all but lost its credibility in the field of sports. No longer can an athlete expect to excel simply by outworking everyone else. Today’s athlete must supplement hard work with scientific means to be successful.

When I was actively competing, I went to great pains to procure as much information as possible about strength training and Powerlifting. I read practically everything I could get my hands on…books about training routines, ergogenic aids, nutrition, biomechanics, etc. I searched the literature for experiments that dealt with any of these subject areas. I also called or visited prominent coaches and athletes throughout the country. Through it all, I obtained a prolific amount of information that greatly enhanced my training and competitive performance.

If you want to reach an optimum level of performance, you will need to do the same thing. The fact that few athletes and coaches engage in intellectual training gives you even a greater edge by doing so. Even a small edge can mean the difference between being good and being great. Without question, the more you know, the better you are likely to be. As Yogi Berra, America’s most beloved sports pseudo-psychologist once said, “Ninety percent of this game is half mental.” Bad arithmetic, but good thinking.

This is one concept that most athletes do not understand. In sports as well as in every aspect of life, intelligence can take you to a higher level. Unfortunately, a lot of athletes don’t seem to comprehend that the body serves the mind. It’s not the other way around. If you have a strong mind, your body will follow. Indeed, there is considerable research in the field of psychomotor development which has revealed a linear relationship between the knowledge an athlete has about his sport and how well he performs. In bried, the more information extended to an athlete about the demands of his sport, the more likely it is that he will excel.