Matt Casale

FTC coaches get this question a lot… How do you punish athletes without running punitive sprints, laps, etc? I’m a huge believer in making practice the best part of a kid’s day. If you can come close to accomplishing this, then you can use PARTICIPATING in practice as a reward for good behavior. I would be hard-nosed and intolerant of bad behavior. If that doesn’t affect change, punitive running will probably make things worse. Players who respect their coach want to please their coach. Beyond voicing displeasure, simply having them stand on the sideline is pure hell for a good athlete. (If it’s not hell, the kid is not worth keeping.) The final straw is to send the kid home… the death penalty. If that doesn’t set him straight, cut the kid loose… the kid doesn’t want to be on your team.

Routinely bracing anything is just a really bad idea. DME income shouldn’t come at the expense of someone’s overall health. In a young athlete, only one week of immobilization leads to a loss of a 3-4% percent of muscle mass, and a 30+% increase in anabolic resistance and insulin resistance in that limb. The muscles in the immobilized leg will not respond to protein intake normally for a few weeks. If we translate this into all the ankle sprains that we needlessly boot or all the knee sprains that we needlessly brace —we are creating a significant degree of harm and muscle loss in our patients. Now, imagine if that’s an older, sedentary person. They already have anabolic resistance and perhaps insulin resistance.