The Fragile Balance between Power and Leadership - article review

If you’re coaching, leadership is some part of what you do.  Coaching individuals, a team of athletes or managing a larger staff of coaches all require different degrees of leadership.  Jones & York (2016) address leadership and power dynamics in their article The Fragile Balance of Power and Leadership and specifically the difference between having power versus developing leadership skills. We’ve done a book review and research article abstracts so far, so now it’s time to add a review/critique of a peer-review research article…

 

Here are 4 points from the article:

 

 

1. Leadership tripod

Jones & York describe leadership as a working relationship between people, but also include a third component to create a “leadership tripod”.  The third component is common ground or a common goal which creates an “us” mindset among the team and protects the leader from being positioned as a “glory-seeker”.  Basically, two parties working together isn’t quite enough – there should be a common ground to build the relationship.

 

2. Social Coordination 

Social Coordination in a leadership context is improving corporation among the group.  A distinction is made between attempts to control the group compared to accomplishing tasks with motivational influence.  A quote from Jarie Bolander suggests that a leader can both create vision and direction while simultaneously “leaving the path open” for others to grow and develop their own leadership skills.

 

3. Dignifying each employee

Most desire to be heard, and the first step is genuine listening, but the idea of dignifying the employee goes further.  This idea includes investing in others’ development and plugging employees into a process connected to the success of the team. 

 

4. Bases of Power

I first head of the 5 bases of power from Brett Bartholomew (ArtofCoaching.com), so I was glad to see them here with definitions and instances of use.  The 5 bases of power are:

·       Reward Power

·       Coercive Power

·       Legitimate Power

·       Referent Power

·       Expert Power

 

Covering these would be it’s own topic, but they are essentially different ways in which a person might exert influence over another.  I’ve had mixed feelings (negative connotations) about the idea of “power” but understanding that power dynamics are part of leadership and human interaction has been helpful.  This article does a nice job of summarizing the bases of power and how they can be used for more effective leadership.

 

If you’re interested in power dynamics and how they relate to coaching and leadership, I’d also strongly encourage you to check out Brett’s work at ArtofCoaching.com and specially his podcast (episode 63: Power Dynamics in Leadership) on this topic.

 

Links

The Fragile Balance between Power and Leadership

 

Art of Coaching podcast on Power Dynamics

Electromyographic Activity of Lower Limbs to Stop Baseball Batting

I really like the idea of what this study did.  There had been some EMG studies in golf and baseball, but Nakata et al. (2012) measured muscle activity in the lower half of experienced and novice players to analyze the difference between swinging and stopping (taking, or NOT swinging).  

Understanding which muscles fire, along with the sequence and timing, can help inform training both in the gym and the batting cage.  The authors also make a great point about pairing this research with Go/No-go research which looks at decision making in motor tasks.

Main takeaways were skilled players more effectively loaded the back leg and transferred to front leg during the swing.  Skilled batters showed higher EMG amplitude to both swing and stop swing.

Link to study

Physical Size Associations to Offensive Performance Among Major League Leaders

This one goes out to a very smart old friend, Dr. Ryan Crotin, a PhD in Exercise Science who has worked for the St. Louis Cardinals, Baltimore Orioles and LA Angels of Anaheim in various sports performance roles.  Here we are celebrating the 2008 New York Penn League Championship win with the Batavia Muckdogs:

In this 2014, Dr. Crotin looked at the relationship of physical size (BMI was main metric used) and offensive performance of MLB league leaders dating back to the 1950s. 

Over the 60 year period, size was positively correlated to performance, but something very interesting started happening in the 1980s where MLB players started to see a significant increase in mass relative to height among the league leaders.

Link to study 

The Effects of Various Weighted Implements on Baseball Swing Kinematics in Collegiate Baseball Players

Last 3 weeks have covered adaptations to weighted implement bat speed training over time (6-12 weeks). This study from Williams, et al. (2017) is much more recent and looks at acute changes to bat speed after warm-up (WU) protocols with different implements.

Basically, the study did not find a difference between 4 different WU protocols.  There was some conflict with previous research but the authors did a nice job discussing the different results, which were mainly attributed to studying different populations (D1 college players in this one compared to HS/recreational in others).

I also appreciate the description and explanation of “kinesthetic illusion” in this study because 75% of the players chose one specific WU protocol despite no significant differences being found in the actual results.

Lastly, I think it’s important to point out that a study like this may not produce statistically significant differences, but still show an actual difference (one MPH in this case).  And in the really world, even a small difference might be enough to improve performance. 

Link to article

Effects of Weighted Bat Implement Training on Bat Swing Velocity

     This study by DeRenne et al. (1995) reports the most significant bat speed improvement resulting from weighted bat training - a group of college players showed a 10% improvement in bat speed over a 12 week training period.  It’s short, 4-page, study that’s well worth the read (link at bottom of page).

    The training protocol included 4 training days per week with 150 total swings (15 sets of 10 swings).  Bat weights were alternated each set and the weights used were within 12% of the regular game bat (27-29 oz for light bats and 31-34 oz for heavy bats). Very interestingly, there was no other practice or training during the study so the improvements of the study are attributed directly to the weighted implement training.

    There were 2 implement training groups (one used coach BP, the other used dry swings) which both improved, but the BP group improved 4% more.  The control group used only dry swings with regular bat and showed a 1% improvement.

    Between the Sergio & Boatwright (1993) study covered last week and this one, there are a couple different training protocols shown to significantly improve bat speed in college-aged athletes.  This should provide some guidance for programming and also flexibility depending on the time of year and training resources available.  It’s possible to combine weighted implement training effectively with concurrent practice and resistance training, and also possible to focus solely on bat speed training with a higher volume of swings.

Link to article 

Training Methods Using Various Weighted Bats and the Effects on Bat Velocity

If you’ve never read a research study on baseball training, start with this one.  It’s just 3 pages long and gets right to the point.  College players trained to increase bat speed 3x/week for 6 weeks by taking 100 swings (20 sets of 5) with various weighted bats.  The players were split into 3 groups (regular bat, heavy bat only, and heavy bat plus fungo bat).  Each group improved bat speed similarly - they gained an average of 8% bat speed.

It’s also notable, to me, that this 6 week training block coincides with typical pre-season practice and my interpretation of the article is that the authors implemented the bat speed training in addition to regular practice. 

Link to study

Effects of Baseball Weighted Implement Training: A Brief Review

We’re starting a series on bat speed training research with a 2009 summary of literature from Dr. Coop DeRenne and Dr. David Szymanski titled “Effects of Baseball Weighted Implement Training: A Brief Review”.  This paper summarizes research on weighted implement training (heavy/light baseball and bats) for both pitching and hitting.  I’m posting summary of the bat speed training for practical purposes, but the  paper provides a a history of implement training going back to Soviet track and field from the 1970’s and 80s.  The list of references (there are 45!) in a paper like this is also very helpful if you are interested in learning more.

Here’s an adapted summary table of the research:
 

Happy to notice that each research study demonstrated successful results in improving bat speed!  We’ll take a close look at each study in the upcoming weeks…

Link to article