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McNemar Focusing on Little Things to Make Big Impact
1/20/2022 9:00:00 AM | Field Hockey
For Duke Sports Performance Coach Jon McNemar, it's a game of inches.
No, we're not talking about football and a running back driving his legs for those final three inches to the first-down marker or a quarterback extending his arm to get the nose of the ball over the goal-line before he's whistled down.
Rather, we're referring to each of the metaphorical inches that occur over the course of a field hockey game – all of the small steps or small movements, when combined, create a full set of actions. And in McNemar's eyes, that is where he comes in.
"I'm at the point in my career where I understand it's the little things that matter," said McNemar when talking about how his approach to sports performance has evolved. "If I can make you one step faster, if I can make you stronger on the ball or if I can make you rotate with more force and power and hit a shot you've never hit before – those are the little things I know that carry over from what we're trying to achieve in the weight room."
McNemar joined the Duke Sports Performance staff in July of 2021 and went right to work with the field hockey team. His first task was to begin teaching, and right behind that learning about each athlete individually. Because for him, education and getting to know each player personally are the cornerstones of creating a successful environment.
"Showing the athletes you care and you're trying to educate them and there's a rhyme and a reason for everything they're doing is crucial," McNemar said about how he motivates athletes. "I think the more they know the more they're apt to buy in to what you're trying to do, especially when it's not fun.
"The biggest influence I can have on my athletes is to educate them that everything they do has a purpose," McNemar said. "This is why we are doing it. This is what you should feel. This will prevent this. This will aid in this. This is going to aid your performance. Just trying to educate them the best I can."
McNemar's own experience as a football player at Fairmont University influenced this approach. While his experience in the weight room was the piece of the collegiate athletic experience he immediately fell in love with, he also realized oftentimes they were simply robots and he made a commitment to himself to make sure that trend was not continued under his watch.
"We just did what we were told," McNemar said of his experience as a collegiate athlete. "We didn't know the reasoning behind it. Why we did this or why we did that and why we were constantly in the grind."
With this in mind, McNemar utilizes the power of information in getting the "buy in" to what he's selling.Â
The acceptance from the field hockey student-athletes did not come immediately. After all, change is hard and they had to adjust to someone new for the first time in their careers in another year with the pandemic still very much a part of daily life. However, McNemar remained diligent. He constantly educated the athletes and spent time with them on road trips and at practices and the shift started to take place.
"I think Jon really believes in us as athletes in the weight room and on the field," said junior Hannah Miller. "He really gives us a constant encouragement to keep pushing our limits we thought we had and breaking them. He surrounds us with such positive energy and reinforcement that makes us want to do our best for him."
The encouragement Miller and each of the women feel from McNemar has allowed them to surpass anything they thought they could do. With McNemar coaching and cheering them through every step, one can see the awe in their eyes when they realize they're deadlifting and squatting more than their weight and leaving those preconceived limits in the rearview mirror.
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"It took a little bit to get them to buy in and trust me, but I think we are really in a good place now," McNemar said of the field hockey team as it begins its first offseason with him. "They are really bought into it and are seeing the changes."
McNemar equates these changes to acquiring new skills. He puts the responsibility on his shoulders to equip each athlete new skills. No, student-athletes not doing dribbling, shooting or defending drills with him, rather he is enhancing their specific type of skills they've learned from their development in field hockey. Â
"If you look at sport performance overall, you have the general stuff that we're trying to achieve like strength, power, speed and conditioning," McNemar said. "But a big chunk of it I feel I can achieve the most is by giving them a new set of skills. So, I look at skill acquisition. They have these specific types of skills so let's increase their skill capacity. If I can teach them new skills, that is going to enhance the skills they already have just by making them overall more athletic, which is the approach I take to a lot of things."
While skill acquisition is at the forefront of everything McNemar leads and the long-term goal, the 2013 Fairmont State University graduate is focusing on the immediate future and preparing their bodies to withstand the practices and games this spring.
The field hockey team will spend three mornings a week with McNemar on the turf for conditioning and in the weight room before they resume team practices at Williams Field at Jack Katz Stadium in February. Therefore, McNemar has them for four weeks where their sole athletic focus is on getting stronger and faster.
"My objective for the next four weeks is I need to get their bodies prepared to withstand the practices. We're going to do a lot of plyometrics to build up their volume and do a lot of medicine ball work so they can withstand a lot of passing and shooting. Speed is always a huge implement in my training so right now we're [working to] to increase force production and elasticity. So, how we're trying to achieve that is by extensive plyometrics and in the weight room their strength movements will be higher intensity lower volume type stuff."
For anyone who has done extensive plyometric training, it is challenging and usually the fun comes because it's over. However, McNemar knows the Duke field hockey team will rise to the occasion.
"They just like to get after it," McNemar said. "They're tough, they want to be pushed and need someone to push them."
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