The (insert sport here) specific agility programme
Or, endurance, or power or speed and so on. This is what is advertised, and it is what sportspeople want. Basketball specific, tennis-specific and so on. But the question I always have is.
Is it Athlete specific?
Whether you are running after a rugby ball, basketball or tennis ball, the initial start is the same. Recently working on some fundamental movements with athletes from different sports has been interesting. Not only are some sports more open-minded, but also athletes within those sports.
The less “sport-specific” work the athlete has done, often means that they can actually move better. Too much specific work that has been caught up in historical coaching baggage can lead to restricted movements physically and inhibited movements mentally.
One fencer told me that she doesn’t have to move her hips when fencing.
Several tennis players said they don’t have to push fast off the first step when moving laterally playing tennis.
This leads me to believe that the sporting context has had so many “sport-specific” drills practised endlessly without looking at how to improve them, except by doing more.
Conversely, Rugby players have been obsessed with the bench press, but not in the application of force and power in the game. Working on this in a session is not “warming up for the bench”, it is helping the athlete apply his strength in the game... where it counts.
Whole, Part, Whole
Play the sport, break it down and improve specific aspects of it, then put it back into context. Part of this is coach education, part of it is athlete education. This can’t get fixed in one session, but it can be developed over time.
Here you can see a breakdown of part of the soccer game that requires strength and balance: I often take out parts to train like this rather than concoct silly exercises in the gym that may/ may not have transfer to the sport.
Work on the athlete and the sporting skill. Don’t sacrifice one for the other for short term “Win on Wednesday” answers.
After filming 72 PE videos over the last year, here are some thoughts.
To paraphrase Admiral Ackbar in ‘Return of the Jedi’: “It’s a wrap”!
Our final PE video was filmed and edited last week: #72. We initially started by planning only nine when I first contacted Willand Primary School 50 weeks ago. None of us knew how traumatic and disruptive the next year would be.
For our last video I recruited some friends and colleagues from around the world. Each of whom coaches with a different style and manner but they all share a consistent message: we want to help the children get better.
Our last (and best) PE video.
Three lessons learned
Planning is essential: we decided to do 10-minute chunks around the 3 themes of movement, physical fitness and skills. This gave the framework from which we could expand. The teachers and pupils could then use those chunks as stand-alone sessions or as part of a bigger lesson.
Technology helps: a better camera, tripod, microphone and editing software meant that the videos in Lockdown 3 looked and sounded better than those first 9. Having captions and links broke up the boring sound of my voice. We could not have done this 10 years ago (on our budget).
It’s hard work overcoming the counting paradigm: We avoided giving simple tasks that are easy to count and record. We seemed to be alone in this endeavour as the curriculum and other NGB videos were obsessed with ‘getting a score’. Schools liked sharing one-minute, simplistic tasks such as catching a pair of socks as many times as possible in a minute and writing it down. This counted as a ‘PE lesson.’ UGH!
Our lessons were about exploration and discovery and implicit learning: things that require patience, diligence and good teaching!
Unfortunately, having been a home schooling parent this year, education seems to be very mechanistic in all areas. My son had to read a poem and do a comprehension quiz: he got 10/10 but had no idea what the poem was about. He read the questions first and then searched the poem for the answers.
This same, limited, approach is endemic within PE. Teachers want numbers and so reduce the learning and task difficulty accordingly: plank for 5 minutes anyone?
You can see the improvement in our loyal video subjects over the last year: the tasks and lessons inspired them to practise on their own, even if they were shy on camera. That has been the best thing for me.
The Prime Minister announced Lockdown 3 at just after 8 pm on Monday night. At 0551 on Tuesday morning I had an email from Miss Hawkins, the Head Teacher at Willand Primary School, asking me if I would produce some more PE videos.
‘Of course,’ I replied. So, here we are again. Another series of videos designed for parents and pupils who are homeschooling for 7 weeks at least. (Our previous collaboration won an award from the Youth Sports Trust).
The Framework
We upload three 10-12 minute videos a week in this sequence.
Video 1: Movement
Video 2: Physical Fitness
Video 3: Skills and drills.
Everything is done with the equipment -poor parent and child in mind. We sometimes show how to make your own equipment in a Blue Peter style.
An example of the new format
The content is fresh and varied and we set up a structure within each class and then show some ideas of ‘freestyling’ where children can build on the ideas we give and develop their own routines.
We are encouraging creativity, exploration and fun rather than just dish out sets/reps and endless minutes of planking.
What is different in 2021.
We have introduced some changes to the format based on what we learned after the last series of lessons.
1: Trying to link and progress between different content. Now we have a library of over 50 videos we can link back to previous lessons and reference them.
2: Adding titles, texts and links within the videos. Better editing software has allowed me to do this. I have paid for ProDirector plus and edit on my phone.
3: Better Audio-Visual equipment. Everything has been upgraded since March 2020. My Motorola phone has much better storage as well as cameras. A new tripod and remote microphone have also been essential.
4: Adding quizzes, fun facts and top tips to break up the lesson and help retain the children’s attention.
We have still not gone ‘viral’ and many pupils don’t watch them, but those that do have been commenting in class. When I see people on our once a day allocated walk outside, they often tell me how they are using the videos.
These videos are imperfect but they are up and running and accessible for the pupils.
If anyone wants the pdf of the lesson outline, please email me.
Here are my personal reading recommendations from this year. If you are stuck for ideas for presents or for something to read yourself then read on.
Like many people, I immersed myself in fiction this year and yes,
Worrying how little has changed
I did read Defoe’s ‘Journal of a Plague Year‘ that held worrying parallels with this year.
Because the libraries shut in March and their online ordering service was closed, I had to buy more books than I would like (supporting Blackwells and LizNoJan as a result).
I still managed to pick up many others from book-swap shelves, birthday presents and of course, my book maven Mandi Abrahams sent me some great ones.
This has meant that my Tsundoku shelf has been full. Having the next book lined up always helps me read more.
My Tsundoku shelf: the unread books
I read many good books, and several great ones, so I have had to split my Top 5 into separate fiction and non-fiction lists, so here goes. Please add any of your own ideas in the comments below.
Top 5 Fiction Books
A hard choice here because there were some dandies in the list but in no particular order:
Epic novel
The Shipping News: Annie Proulx. Sublime prose and similes to die for. A great human interest novel with the Newfoundland coast being a key part.
The Milkman: Anna Burns. An excellent, moving novel about a young woman living in Belfast in the late 1970s. Outstanding writing.
The Blind Assassin: Margaret Atwood. A superb, cleverly crafted and well-written novel about life in the 1930s in Canada. Contains an SF short story and a fantasy story within the main novel. Enjoyable to read and fathom.
Life and Fate: Vassily Grossman. An epic novel about one family and their friends set in and around Stalingrad in WWII. The sparse Russian writing is a delight to read and the human stories are well placed against the horrific backdrop. Fantastic.
The Dog of the Marriage: Amy Hempel. Four books in one. A sublime collection of short stories that are superbly written and entertaining.
Top 5 Non-Fiction Books
Again, I read some good ones, and those of you looking for coaching books might be disappointed. I went with the best writing and ideas (Academics who want their work read should learn how to write better).
An excellent resource
The Body: Bill Bryson. A superbly written overview of what makes the body work, and the people who discovered how. A page-turner.
Europe Between The Oceans (9000 BC-AD 1000): Barry Cunliffe. A comprehensive overview of the macro movements and events that have shaped our history. It uses the geography of our European peninsula to describe why peoples moved and traded and fought. Excellent.
The Art Of Fact: Ed. K.Kerrane & B. Yagoda. A superb collection of essays, book excerpts and newspaper articles from scores of different authors. A showcase of literary non-fiction and an account of many different human stories.
The Weightlifting Encylopedia: Arthur Dreschler. Written in 1998, this is a well-written, comprehensive guide to the sport. If it was published now it would have less text and more pictures. I like this edition. Great personal examples from the author and well laid out. Fantastic.
Play Practice: Alan Launder & Wendy Piltz. An experience-based practical book about using developmental and “working model” games to help develop sports sense and ability. Based on the authors’ real-life mistakes and successes, it offers many practical ideas of relevant games for PE teachers. Very useful.
The full list of books with a short summary of each
Worth a subscription
A Slip of the Keyboard: Terry Pratchett. A series of newspaper articles and speeches made over 25 years. The first half is about writing and publishing, which is very funny. The second half is about his Alzheimer’s disease and how he is coping with that. Truly a great writer.
Night Walks: Charles Dickens. Essays on his ramblings around London. His observations are witty and descriptive. I might make Dickens a thing to read every Christmas time now.
What Matters Most: John Doerr. Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) form the backbone of this book. Case studies of this form of management. Very useful.
James S. Corey: Tiamat’s Wrath. Sci-fi soap, wearing a bit thin now.
Calypso: David Sedaris. 18 semi auto-biographical essays. Laugh out loud in parts. Very well written.
The Stinging Fly (Summer 2019): Various. Modern writing, short stories and poems. The ‘Border’ focus was excellent, but some of the younger generations of writers are self-indulgent, only talking about their writing.
The Body: Bill Bryson. A superbly written overview of what makes the body work, and the people who discovered how. A page-turner.
Night Boat to Tangiers: Kevin Barry. Modern and interesting, raw prose. A bit too disjointed for me.
A Movement Approachto Educational Gymnastics: Ruth Morison. Read for the 2nd time, got more out of having taught for 5 years now. Superb.
The Modern Antiquarian: Julian Cope. A beautiful book that comes in a box! Covers pre-history in Britain and how the Romans and Christians wrote over what existed previously. has a gazetteer of dozens of stone circles, henges and dolmens in the UK. Very interesting.
Emerald Eye: Various, ed Frank Ludlow and Roelof Goudriaan. A collection of SF and fantasy short stories from Ireland. Very good.
An Introduction to Movement Study and Teaching: Marion North. Short, with some good ideas. A lot of dance and drama involved.
The Depths: Henning Mankell. A Swedish novel about the navy in WWI. The interesting lead character is deeply flawed.
Young Skins: Colin Barrett. A short story collection by this modern Irish writer. Set mostly in one fictional small town, great prose, interesting situations.
Life Among the Savages: Shirley Jackson. Extremely well-written memoir of life in rural Vermont with young children. Funny and relevant 50 years later.
And Then There Were None: Agatha Christie. Good plot, but dated and laborious writing.
Dynamic Physical Education for Elementary School Children: Robert Pangrazi. A huge book, in-depth and lots of practical ideas. A must for p.e. teachers.
The Buried Giant: Kazuo Ishiguro. A beautiful, sad mythical tale. A treat.
Consider This: Chuck Palahniuk. An excellent book for writers about writing. Useful tips and relevant anecdotes.
Socratic Discourses: Plato and Xenophon. Part of the Everyman’s library, wisdom from the wisest of all. Hard to get through due to the conversational style of writing, but useful nuggets in there.
Anatomy For The Artist: Sarah Simblet. A sumptuous book by this Dr and artist. Great illustrations, I enjoyed reading this.
Martin Eden: Jack London. A semi-autobiographical account of a struggling writer who burns out. Brilliant.
The Dog of the Marriage: Amy Hempel. Four books in one. A sublime collection of short stories that are superbly written and entertaining.
The Witcher: Andrzej Sapkowski. Time killing fantasy short story collection. Meh.
Life In The Universe: Michael J. Farrell. What a collection of entertaining short stories. Funny and well written.
With Lawrence in Arabia: Lowell Thomas. A super little book written in the aftermath of World War I, before Lawrence’s death. Very descriptive and atmospheric writing.
Tales of Space and Time: H.G. Wells. 5 short stories/novellas. Interesting to see what Wells thought 2020 and beyond would look like.
The Shipping News: Annie Proulx. Sublime prose and similes to die for. A great human interest novel with the Newfoundland coast being a key part.
The Stinging Fly (Winter 2019): Various authors. Collection of short stories and essays. Very good writing.
Hothouse: Brian Aldiss. Classic SF novel set on a future Earth which is dying. A Hugo award-winning journey of discovery.
Britain BC: Francis Pryor. An extensive account of pre-Roman Britain. Lots of archaeology and description, well written and interesting.
The Encyclopedia of Physical Fitness: Ed by Thomas Cureton & Reuben Frost. An overview of many sports and some dance and outdoor activities. Includes rules and histories of the activities: dated in parts, useful in others.
Twelve Stories and a Dream: H.G. Wells. More misses than hits from this prolific writer feels a bit dated in parts. I like the way that he wraps up each story.
The Pianist: Wladyslaw Szpilman. A sombre and understated account of one man’s miraculous survival of the Nazi occupation of Warsaw. Shows how random and arbitrary death was.
The Revenant: Michale Punke. A novel of the Western frontier in the 1820s. More of a fictional history lesson.
The Milkman: Anna Burns. An excellent, moving novel about a young woman living in Belfast in the late 1970s. Outstanding writing.
Your Move: A New Approach to the Study of Movement and Dance: Ann Hutchinson Guest. An illustrated guide to Labanotation. Hard going but interesting. It is like learning a new language.
Europe Between The Oceans (9000 BC-AD 1000): Barry Cunliffe. A comprehensive overview of the macro movements and events that have shaped our history. It uses the geography of our European peninsula to describe why peoples moved and traded and fought. Excellent.
The Small Back Room: Nigel Balchin. Short novel about a scientific research unit in London during World War II. Interesting and niche.
A Short History of English Literature: Sir Ifor Evans. This edition was written in 1963 and covers plays, novels and prose up until then. A useful guide.
Midnight’s Children: Salman Rushdie. A hard read with very flowery prose.: one sentence was two pages long,. The story is interesting but I can’t see what all the fuss is about.
Arizona Ames: Zane Grey. Disappointing and simplistic Western. A one-dimensional lead character.
Life and Fate: Vassily Grossman. Epic novel about one family and their friends set in and around Stalingrad in WWII. The sparse Russian writing is a delight to read and the human stories are well placed against the horrific backdrop. Fantastic.
Modern Short Stories: J. Hadfield (Ed). 20 stories from authors such as Conrad, Wodehouse and Pritchett, printed in 1962. Great examples of this form.
The Stinging Fly (Summer 2020): Various, Edited by Danny Denton. A collection of essays, poems and short stories. The essays and a couple of the short stories were good, the poetry I can leave.
The Weightlifting Encylopedia: Arthur Dreschler. Written in 1998, this is a well written, comprehensive guide to the sport. If it was published now it would have less text and more pictures. I like this edition. Great personal examples from the author and well laid out. Fantastic.
Self-Editing for Fiction writers: Renni Browne and Dave King. An older book, very useful with clear examples and downright funny in places.
Proverbs of Middle Earth: David Rowe. An informative book that shows how much thought went into Tolkien’s world-building.
Proxopera: Benedict Kiely. Short novel about an old man and his family in Northern Ireland in 1977. Sad, funny, poetic. A good read.
Play Practice: Alan Launder & Wendy Piltz. Experience-based practical book about using developmental and “working model” games to help develop sports sense and ability. Based on the authors’ real-life mistakes and successes, it offers many practical ideas of relevant games for PE teachers. Very useful.
From Alamein to Zem Zem: Keith Douglas. Superbly written account of the 22-year-old’s journey in North Africa as a tank commander in WWII. Clear, personal, tragic and funny.
Once There Was a War: John Steinbeck. Accounts from his time as a correspondent in England, North Africa and Italy during WWII. As usual, well-written and entertaining. How that man has lived inspires me.
Tiny Habits: B.J. Fogg. A lot of book for a small amount of gain. Some useful ideas, but too much fluff.
The Sportswriter: Richard Ford. Nothing to do with sports, just a novel about one man dealing with life over a weekend. Thought-provoking.
Waylander: David Gemmell. A fantasy novel that I first read 30 years ago, simple page-turner.
The Blind Assassin: Margaret Atwood. A superb, cleverly crafted and well-written novel about life in the 1930s in Canada. Contains an SF short story and a fantasy story within the main novel. Enjoyable to read and fathom.
The Edge of the Sword: Anthony Farrar-Hockley. An autobiographical account of the battle of Imjin River in the Korean war and life in captivity. A ripping yarn that is understated and inspirational.
Hero in the Shadows: David Gemmell. The third Waylander novel, read for the first time in 20 years. Interesting themes if a bit repetitive.
Cat’s Eye: Margaret Atwood. Strange novel in which nothing much happens, similar style to Blind Assassin.
Playing For Keeps: David Hamberstam. An account of Michael Jordan’s rise to prominence and dominance in the NBA. Well written with a good background on Jordan and his teammates and opponents.
On Solitude: Michel De Montaigne. A short series of essays from the 16th Century French philosopher. Some good ideas.
The Art Of Fact: Ed. K.Kerrane & B. Yagoda. A superb collection of essays, book excerpts and newspaper articles from scores of different authors. A showcase of literary non-fiction and an account of many different human stories.
Roverandom: J.R.R. Tolkien. A story written for his young children before The Hobbit. Interesting to see how the author is developing ideas that he uses in later books and those that he abandons.
Goodbye to All That: Robert Graves. Autobiography of the young poet’s life including his account of serving with the Royal Welch Fusiliers in WWI. Very good.
The Bodysnatchers: Jack Finney. Classic SF story about alien seed pods taking over a small town in California. Part of the ‘reds under the beds’ genre.
Fight Club: Chuck Palahniuk. A sparse, tightly-plotted novel about Generation X trying to find a life. Much quoted, but worth the read.
Anatomy of Agility: Frans Bosch. The dense, complicated textbook that has some enlightening points. Not for beginners.
E.M. Forster: Aspects of the Novel. A collection of Forster’s ‘Clark Lectures’. A short but delightful read.
Albert Camus: The Myth of Sysiphus. A philosophical treatise about the absurd.
The Collected Stories of Nabokov. Over 60 short stories in this huge volume. I was defeated halfway through so took an operational pause. Resumed and enjoyed about a dozen in the second half.
The Alchemist: Paulo Coehlo. A short novel about a young man searching for meaning in life. A modern fable.
Journal of a Plague Year: Daniel Defoe. The parallels with 2020 are uncanny. Interesting and depressing to see how little has changed.
Penguin Science Fiction: Ed. Brian Aldiss. A collection of SF short stories published in 1962. Some great reads, including one by Steinbeck.
The Salt Path: Raynor Winn. An autobiographical account of a suddenly homeless couple walking around the South-West coast path. An uplifting read, great descriptions of our local area.
The Narrow Land: Christine Dwyer Hickey. A superb novel with Edward Hopper and his wife as central characters and Cape Cod as the location.
The Man Who Walked Through Time: Colin Fletcher. One man’s journey on foot across the Grand Canyon National Park. Sometimes descends into a stream of consciousness but a reminder of how transient we are.
Regular readers will know of the work I have done with Willand Parish Council to improve our village parks. This is an ongoing process that started five years ago. We are gradually upgrading or adding play equipment and facilities in our village.
My observations of the park equipment a few years ago was that the under- 5s were well serviced, but there was not much if anything for 6-11-year-olds and nothing for teenagers and adults except 4 sets of football goalposts. The design of the park equipment was at the mercy of housing developers who would always opt for the bare minimum.
Knowing that children (and adults) like to climb, explore, hang, jump and generally get into scrapes if given the opportunity I approached the Parish Council about upgrading its equipment. What I didn’t want them to do was invest in a set of ‘outdoor gym equipment’ the type of thing that sounds like a good idea, but ends up being an expensive plastic eyesore that is a repository for bird droppings.
Expensive, ugly and never used.
The ‘one purpose only’ equipment such as a leg press or shoulder press machines, leave no opportunity for creativity or play. They are horrible inside gyms so why try to replicate them outdoors?
(N.B. the machine-driven craze was started in the 1970s by bodybuilders looking to isolate individual muscles. This then was deemed ‘safe’ by gym owners because there was little skill involved. Little skill= little fun+ boredom. By encouraging gym users to sit and lie down on equipment, the machines removed any need to balance or retain ‘core-strength’. )
And yet, many councils invest in this.
Not Willand.
I was well received by our Parish Council, who are hard-working, prudent and thorough in liaising with other authorities and companies that think they can fleece the public sector.
Vibrant, living spaces
Fast forward a few years and the two parks that our PC now own are well equipped with equipment and very well used. The addition of picnic table and extra benches came to my mind after reading Christopher Alexander’s ‘A pattern language’ and my observations that parents were getting tired of standing before their children were tired of playing.
The parents and elderly residents now have somewhere to rest and chat, read their paper or even have a picnic.
During the lockdown, our nine parks were even more important for the physical and mental well being of all our residents.
Everything is within walking distance and is free to use. Young, old, rich, poor, working, furloughed, sacked or retired: by investing in our community facilities with our local tax, everyone benefits.
Ideas on how to use the equipment
I have filmed five videos that show some simple ways to use various pieces of equipment. My friend Alex Grinter who is an expert Parkour coach guest stars and shows much more interesting and advanced ways to use the equipment.
Because the equipment reflects the natural explorative ideas of human beings, there are multiple ways to use each piece. It is hard to get bored. People of all ages can use them (N.B. I am 51 years-old in these videos and Alex is 28.): if they are tall enough to reach them. They can just adjust the type of exercise they perform.
Here are the five videos:
Pull Up Bars
Parallel Bars
High Poles for climbing
Wooden Hurdles
Summary
The message to councils and local authorities is: choose your equipment wisely.
Don’t follow the latest fads, make it accessible to all, including rest areas and do a little in each space. Don’t buy what the playground suppliers tell you is ‘popular’: consult someone who knows about exercise and play for the different age groups.
Children are micromanaged for much of their lives, putting simple but robust and varied equipment into playgrounds allows them to explore, play and be creative. As well as improving their health.
It’s a lot cheaper than trying to fix them once they are old, obese or have chronic health problems.
The Covid-19 pandemic has focused minds acutely on risk factors that either prolong the illness or cause victims to suffer worse symptoms.
Obesity, age, underlying health problems and ethnic background are four of these risk factors. We cannot alter two of these, but we can do something about the other two.
Whether you just want to be healthier or you want to reduce your risk of suffering badly from Covid-19 (and many other health-related problems such as diabetes or heart disease) then read on.
If jogging puts the fear of the Gods into you, don’t worry, the advice that follows contains NO JOGGING and NO LYCRA!
Thomas Cureton (The Godfather of Physical Education in the USA) came up with a series of fitness tests that can be done at home. Here are 3 of them in this video. Don’t be frightened, try them out.
Try these 3 tests out to see if you are strong enough for daily life
Why strength is important
Strength and mobility are two components of fitness that are often neglected by fifty-year-olds who are trying to get fit. Daily life for many requires no feats of strength, our modern post-industrial, post-agrarian society has removed them all, except for unscrewing the lid off a jar of pickled onions.
As you will have found from failing those 3 tests that are designed to represent normal health not elite-athlete status, your strength is lacking.
Gardening requires mobility and strength
Of course, you can avoid all efforts to measure and be tested (there are no pull-up bars on Strava) but that doesn’t help you as you get older and one day you can’t pick up your grandchildren. Or you strain a muscle doing gardening or digging a sandpit on the beach.
The type of strength that is important for health is demonstrated by Andy Stone (58-years old in this video) doing this mini-workout. The ability to get up and down off the floor with control, pushing up and balancing with both upper and lower body can be done with no equipment.
Andy Stone (58 years old) exercising in his garden (yard).
(Andy has 50 of these videos on his channel. If you did 1 a day during the week, that is 10 weeks of exercise without repetition).
As you can hear from his breathing, just doing different movements continuously does work your heart and lungs: blood is required by the muscles, waste products are transported away, so the heart beats faster. Oxygen is required to keep doing the work and so you have to breath faster.
Kenneth Cooper, the founder of aerobics (He of the Cooper Test:12-min run) and 1.5-mile run test) told Vern Gambetta in the back of a taxi on the way back from a conference that ‘After 40, strength is more important to work on.’
Tip 1: Do a mini-workout every day for 10 minutes. Frequency is better than the intensity at the beginning.
Why mobility is important
As you may discover trying to tie your shoelaces in the morning, it’s not only your paunch that stops you from doing it in standing, it’s your stiff body. Too much time sat at a desk or in a car or binge-watching Netflix series leads to your joints becoming stiff.
You are NOT Bradley Wiggins!
Like strength, you don’t know mobility is missing because you don’t have to touch your toes when sat on your Peloton bike for hours. You just notice it when you get off and have to waddle to the sofa to undo your cycling shoes.
If you exercise in a limited range of motion your joints will gradually become accustomed to moving less. That is one of the main reasons why using machines in the gym or just cycling or just running for your exercise is problematic.
It is very difficult to stretch your way out of a lifetime of bad posture: a 2-minute calf stretch after jogging at 9-minute-mile pace for an hour will not solve the problem. Instead, try to exercise through many different ranges of motion in every exercise session.
An example is a lunge. In this video (I was a 50-year-old man when filmed) I show some different lunge sequences. The medicine ball is not heavy, it just helps remind me of my posture.
Tip 2: Exercise through many ranges of motion in many different directions.
Why skill is important
Some people just like the grind. For whatever reason, they do the exercise equivalent of wearing a hair shirt and flogging themselves with birch twigs. ‘I don’t care what I do, as long as I get tired and sweaty.’ Their self-esteem is linked to doing ‘more.’
Good for them. I doubt if that is a sustainable attitude for the long term. Your body does not need to be ‘punished’ for your unhealthy lifestyle. That is a way to get injured or be miserable or boring: have you ever met someone who does Triathlon?
By doing exercise that has a skill or learning element in it you can look forward to the session rather than dread it. This is why activities such as climbing, yoga, surfing and dance are popular (as well as their social interactions). The process of learning keeps me hungry to train: I never get bored.
Cheat alert: James was 49 years and 8 months old in this video.
A parent of an athlete I train said that ‘gym training is boring.’ He has tried to relieve the boredom by buying ever more pieces of equipment. But, no amount of sandbags, kettlebells and Bulgarian Goat Bags (yes, that is a thing) can make a dull exercise programme come to life.
Weightlifting is a sport that requires strength, mobility, skill as well as speed and coordination. In this video, you can see Marius Hardiman (50-years-old when filmed) doing the snatch. He is only using a lighter weight to demonstrate but you can see how well he moves.
Marius Hardiman (50 years old) demonstrating the snatch.
I am not saying that everyone in their fifties should come to our weightlifting clubs (although they would be welcome). I am saying that everyone in their fifties would benefit from finding an activity that helps them develop and maintain their strength, mobility and requires some skill or learning.
Tip 3: Find an activity that has a learning component.
Summary
As you can see from the videos of us three men in our fifties, you don’t have to become a Strava-bore or a couch potato with a Dad-bod. You can do creative and fun exercise at home or with others and move well into your fifties. This will give you the fitness to play with your children or grandchildren and be active into your 60s.
For those readers in Oxfordshire, Marius runs a series of classes for the over-fifties called Well Fit.
Anyone over 50 in Devon who wants to follow an athletic development programme, please contact James Marshall at James@excelsiorgroup.co.uk
N.B.No exercise programme will help you escape a bad diet, so watch this video for ideas on eating sensibly.
As pupils return to school they will find that the opportunities to play team sports will be reduced.
Physical distancing will mean that rugby, football and netball, for example, will be too difficult to administer. Travelling between schools will also be reduced: the risk of transferring the virus will be too great.
“The barn burned down/ now I can see the moon.” Japanese Proverb.
Teachers can teach, rather than referee, and inspire a generation of young people to become physically active, rather than slavishly follow the crowd and watch young people disengage from physical activity.
In this blog I shall lay out the following ideas:
· Debunking the Traditional Sports Myth
· The Health of the Nation and how elitism has infected the state school syllabus.
· How P.E, can taught well in Primary Schools
The ‘Traditional’ Sports Myth
Many teachers refer to sports like rugby and cricket as ‘Traditional Sports’ versus ‘new-age’ sports like Parkour. This has become part of the P.E. vernacular and is rarely challenged.
I challenge this misconception and blame Thomas Hughes.
Hughes wrote ‘Tom Brown’s Schooldays’, the popular nineteenth-century novel that shows the character-building effects of rough games and cricket on boys like Tom, at Rugby school. Pierre de Coubertin (founder of the modern Olympics) was a fan of the book and it formed part of his premise for recreating the Modern Games.
Thomas Arnold, the real Head Master of Rugby School (The Doctor in TBS) was no sporting evangelist, he preferred the curing of souls and the developing of boys’ intellects. His educational reforms and treatises did not advocate sport.
So, it is the fictionalised account of Rugby School, aided by William Webb Ellis picking up the ball (1823) and running with it, that has influenced our culture. Rugby School, for those that don’t know, is an Independent (fee-paying) school.
Parkour is often referred to as ‘non-traditional’ yet it predates rugby. Whereas in Britain the playing fields of Eton were credited for defeating Napoleon at Waterloo, in Germany, it was boys playing in the woods. Scared by the prospect of invasion by Napoleon, Father Jahn took a group of boys into the woods outside Berlin, where they practised running, jumping and leaping over and up obstacles.
When the winter came, they moved indoors and built an apparatus that simulated the outdoor obstacles. So began modern gymnastics.
Gymnastics, wrestling, weight-lifting and boxing were all included in the Ancient Games. They are more ‘Traditional’ than team sports and yet have disappeared from school curricula.
The Health of the Nation and how elitism has infected the state school syllabus
Eight years ago the UK hosted the Olympics and boasted of a legacy to inspire generations to follow. There was little evidencefrom previous countries that any uptake in physical activity followed them hosting the Olympics.
The UK invested £14.8 billion so that 80,000 people could sit in a stadium to watch a few people run around a track. In the case of the women’s 1500m final, 6 of the 9 top finishers were associated with taking Performance Enhancing Drugs. It has been called, host ‘the dirtiest race in history.’
The stadium is now used by West Ham United, so the UK taxpayer has helped subsidise a professional football club’s business.
The clamour to be at the top of the medals table has resulted in millions of pounds being invested to support a few individuals achieve their dreams. Funding for sports in the UK has been dependent on their achieving medal success for years now. UK Sport has deliberately targetted fewer sports that can offer ‘better returns’ since the GB team had poor results in Atlanta 1996.
The UK is famous for winning medals sitting down and going backwards: sailing, rowing, cycling and equestrian. Sports that are expensive to take up so fewer countries have participants which increase the UK chances of winning. Team GB does less well at weight lifting, athletics and swimming; sports which rely less on technology and so equalising the odds for the poorer nations.
No medals= no funding
Investment has been diverted from ‘grass roots’ to ‘performance’ in order to showcase ‘our talent’. For example, Modern Pentathlon received £6,140,529 between 2017-2020 on the back of winning a silver medal in 2012. Basketball, which has zero chance of winning a medal at the Olympics, has received no funding.
According to The Independent (2016), basketball was second only to football with 218,000 children aged 14-16 playing the sport once a week. How many children were inspired to take up modern pentathlon after its lone medal in 2012?
The money invested in Team GB is mind blowing: for Rio it was £274,465,541. When you realise that of the 96 gold medals won by Team GB between Atlanta (1996) and Rio (2016) just 12 people won or contributed to 49 of them, you can then think how has this helped the country?
12 people!
When the UK government says that investing in sport and the Olympics is good for the country, what they mean is that it is good for a tiny minority of athletes and a lot of support staff.
The Olympics was a smokescreen that covered the underlying poor health of our nation. I wrote to my local MP, Neil Parish, in 2012 to ask him about investment in school Physical Education. He wrote back and spouted the Party Line about the Olympics ‘inspiring a generation‘.
9 years on, and how has that worked out? The Prime Minister, who was Mayor of London at the time of the Olympics was hardly inspired: he weighed 110kg at only 177cm and only his hospitalisation from COVID has made him think of losing weight.
His poor health inspired him to do something, not taking selfies with Gold Medal winners.
The obsession with ‘winning’ has infected our state school physical education system. Now there is a narrow syllabus and the focus is on replicating adult sports with their rules and measurements, rather than building skills, games sense and physical literacy through purposeful and systematic education.
Instead of celebrating every child’s achievement through movement and learning new skills, Primary Schools are participating in leagues that involve children who are already competing.
Why are schools competing in tennis competitions if they don’t play tennis at school? Why are secondary schools throwing people into 100m hurdle races and triple jump competitions after children have only done this twice in school?
What usually happens is that those that are ‘good’ (in reality early-developers or early-specialisers) are selected and the rest of the children are left to wallow in a cesspit of mediocrity and labelled as ‘low-ability’ or ‘disengaged.’
Do you remember “Sport for All”? What a good slogan that was: there is some type of sport for all people.
But select, play and adapt for the children where they are now: not on trying to replicate the ultra-competitive Independent schools that use sports fixtures as an arena to showcase how much better they are than other similar schools.
The Norwegian Social Democratic Model has focussed on the masses rather than the elite. As a result early-specialisation sports such as gymnastics are not targetted nor are expensive sports such as bobsleigh.
Instead, all children are offered a thorough background in sport and the competitive structures are started later. Unsurprisingly, good sportsmen and women have developed as a result of this method and the state gives a small fund to those who make it to the top.
PE can be taught well in Primary Schools
All is not lost. Despite some poor saps being forced to complete a ‘Daily Mile’ (the brainchild of some bottom-feeding, business-person who is cleaning up financially by exploiting imagination -starved and desperate headteachers) there are opportunities to teach our children well.
Willand Primary School won an award for its efforts to provide quality Physical Education during lockdown. Here are some of the ideas that can be used in your school.
Realise that play and playgrounds are as important as anything that is being ‘taught.’ Just look at what Greg Thompson does with hopscotch below.
Teach fundamental movements and get the children to practise in an infinite variety of situations/ environments. PE is not like the classroom: children have to move to learn, they can not be ‘educated’ by sitting and listening to a teacher recite rules.
For those of you at the back of the class who haven’t been paying attention, that means hopping, skipping, gliding, running, jumping, throwing, catching, braking, striking and rolling.
3. Build games sense in from an early age by using plenty of collaborative and cooperative activities alongside competitive situations. Children are great at designing their own games: many of which are inclusive, fair and interesting.
“We have been waiting since Year 6”.
Compare that with cricket or rounders: games designed to produce patient English queuers who can stand in line and wait for ‘their turn.’
If a teacher has to spend 10 minutes explaining the rules, there are too many rules.
1v1, 2v1, 2v2 and 3v3 are just about all that children under 10-years old can process.
By limiting the size and complexity of the game, the teacher provides more opportunities for all the children to get involved. A couple of years doing this and then the 10-11-year-old children are ready for bigger sided matches such as 5 or 6 aside.
I know that children do compete in bigger sides and earlier but watch what is happening closely (get off your smartphone) and you will see that only 1 or 2 in each side really understand what is happening. the rest are just drifting along.
Summary
Never has our Nation been in more in need of a concerted effort to improve the health and well being of our children. Instead of throwing them into the arena with 80,000 adults baying at the lions slaughtering the hapless victims (or 20 parents shouting at a tag rugby tournament), let us focus on creating competent movers who can have a choice of activities that allow them to make friends and learn new skills and be challenged on their terms.
Those who wish to compete do so in the playground: the races and jumps and matches that are held with deadly earnest without a pushy-parent or a teacher trying to win a league table involved.
No medals or trophies are involved. Instead, the reward is a Nation of happy, active and confident children.
Take Action Now.
Any schools that would like advice on rejuvenating their physical education or hosting workshops for their teachers can look at our list of courses or contact James Marshall directly.
The benefits and pitfalls of using technology to monitor training.
No single number can measure your performance
There are many different ways of measuring the work you do in training.
If you are doing a single discipline sport like swimming or running or cycling then you could use a simple metric such as distance covered.
But using just one ‘easy to measure’ number would then mean that your 10km ‘easy’ run on a Sunday would then look a lot tougher on paper (or screen) than your 6 sets of 60-metre hill sprints at ‘full speed‘ on a Monday even though the purpose of each session is different.
With all the recent developments in training technology, much of which is becoming affordable (just) for the recreational athlete, it is easy to get lost in the Data Smog.
In this blog, I will outline a simple measuring tool that allows you to measure your overall training load across all your sessions. It will then look at how to use that information on a weekly and monthly basis to plan your training and reduce the chances of overtraining or illness.
I include the Case Study of a Modern Pentathlete who has to juggle 5 disciplines and her supplemental training and how this tool helps her.
Why measure training load?
The underlying premise when coaching athletes is to plan and measure progress to achieve a goal. A combination of training and adequate recovery allows the body to adapt and become better at doing what it has been practising (1,2).
Too much work and too little recovery lead to staleness, illness and potentially burnout or injury. Too little work and too much recovery mean your performance either stays the same or regresses.
Measuring the work accurately allows each athlete to gain a better understanding of what works for them as long as performance is measured too. Just measuring work, without any idea of performance has little relevance.
A simple example is trying to lose weight. Usually, more work done equals more calories burnt. But an example of unexpected outcomes that occur when just focussing on work was the well-reported study from the University of Pittsburgh that looked at fitness trackers and weight loss (3).
This well-designed study that monitored 471 subjects over 2 years found that those subjects who used the trackers actually lost less weight compared to those with no trackers. The researchers thought that by providing more data on work done, those subjects would be encouraged to do more. The opposite happened.
This study had far more subjects and was conducted over a far longer time than almost all of the studies looking at athletes and training loads. The key message is that the measuring can be a distraction from the performance (weight loss in this case), which is dependent on many other factors.
What about measuring GPS, Heart Rates, Lactate Thresholds or Power Outputs?
I often see people measuring things that appear to have little relevance to performance. They measure things because they can be measured, rather than thinking “Will this help me go faster?”
No one ever won an Olympic Medal for having the best Heart Rate, Lactate or Power outputs. People win medals by crossing the line first, jumping further, lifting heavier things or throwing things further.
Whilst “marginal gains” has become a popular mantra, this only applies to a very few people. Instead, most gains can be made by focussing on one or two big, important, variables that really impact your performance. Measuring those and then manipulating them so that your body adapts will lead to a performance improvement.
There are more than one or two things that affect your performance, and it is easy to get distracted by measuring minor influences because your friend uses this fancy gizmo.
As creatures of habit, many athletes get stuck with a very similar training load each week, or sometimes each day. Having a variety of training, alternating hard and easy days, and adjusting training from week to week are sound training principles that allow sustained progress and adherence.
Monotony in training can lead to injury
If an athlete just trains on feel or believes that every session has to be hard, then burnout, staleness and injury can occur. By monitoring training load, the athlete can see if they have been following the plan, or whether they have got stuck in a rut.
Problems with measuring training loads
Before reviewing some training load options, it is important to understand that the body is a complex organism and many factors outside of training will affect how each athlete adapts. These include:
gender, age, training history, illness, stress, diet, sleep, work, travel, climate, hydration and exams.
If we have two athletes with similar performances in a 5km run of 16 minutes, then a similar training programme may have different results due to the above factors. Monitoring training load is very useful but is only part of the process.
There are three main problems with measuring training loads:
Reliability: Is the measurement accurate at all times and with all users? A set of scales should be easy enough to use by different people from different backgrounds and give accurate results for mass.
Is the same accuracy present when it analyses your body fat percentage? The more complex the measurement, the more room for error. Do pedometers on phones measure distance covered as well as they do steps? (In a sidebar, why measure steps at all?) Be careful about relying on apps.
2. Validity: Is the measurement relevant to your sport?
Is body fat percentage important to you as a cyclist or runner? If so, then those with the lowest body fat percentage would be the fastest. But, is Mo Farah’s bf % low because he trains so much, or can he run fast because he is lean? It is obvious that no runner with 25% bf is going to make an Olympic final, but would 6% vs 7% bf be the deciding factor as both runners are very lean?
A more obvious example would be using a heart rate monitor to measure your gym session. It is irrelevant for what you are trying to achieve unless you are doing a cardiovascular circuit.
3. Transfer: Many of the measurements are modality-specific. Heart Rate is great for endurance work, but this changes according to whether you are running, swimming or cycling. 168bpm means different intensities for all 3 of these activities.
Measuring kilometres covered is highly relevant for cycling, but useless for run speed sessions. 10km would be a tough swim session, but only a warm up for cycling.
Trying to use the same tool to measure different things is common because it is easy. The alternative is often to have different tools for everything, but then you are laden down with data and it all becomes meaningless.
Common Ways to Measure Training Load
Here are some measurement tools with their respective advantages and disadvantages.
To save repetition, remember that these tools are designed to measure a singlecomponent of fitness. Adjusting your training to improve these results, rather than what counts in a race: crossing the line first, is the most common error amongst many athletes.
These have some use for the ‘team-skill sports’ but they do not measure the quality of play nor the effectiveness of your play. I.e. you could produce great numbers on the pitch but be as effective as a deckhand on a submarine.
Distance would be an example of this. It is a great tool, but if your training changes so you add more miles to get better scores, but neglect variations of pace, intensity and terrain, you will limit what performance changes you make. This is human nature.
Heart Rate: A very simple method which requires no equipment except a watch. Heart Rate rises with a corresponding increase in effort and work. Therefore, if all else is equal, the workout with the higher heart rate has required more effort and work done (4).
Very useful for comparing like for like workouts over time such as running a fastest mile in 5:30 with a heart rate of 180 beats per minute(bpm). You can then try and match that intensity in sub sets of 800m or 400m. Or try and run the same mile at the end of the training block at the same pace and see if your heart rate is lower or higher, indicating that your heart has got stronger.
“Heart Rate should be an indicator not a dictator.” Bryan Fish.
There are several disadvantages, some of which are due to a misunderstanding of application. Use Heart Rate to help you pace and judge how you feel based on times and distances. The main error is in estimating your maximum heart rate and then planning sessions around percentages of this fictitious maximum.
Instead, use something like running your fastest possible mile to get a closer approximation of what your maximum heart rate is.
Climate, hydration and stress are three of the factors that can influence Heart Rate and therefore it should not be used as the sole indicator (5) of training load.
Distance: A simple and effective measure, made easier with technology. Great for single discipline sports such as running or cycling. Less effective when comparing across disciplines, useless in the weights room (load in kg would work better).
Lactate: Less common now, but very popular twenty years ago when portable lactate testers became accessible and they are still used in swimming. However, there have been many flaws found partly due to outside factors such as carbohydrate ingestion, preceding exercise and muscle damage affecting results (6). Also, the measurement error that arrives from a pinprick of blood outweighs and potential changes in exercise intensity, so you are looking at very flawed data.
GPS: Useful for measuring distance and changes of pace and speed. Very useful to assess and monitor how you change according to terrain and difference portions of the session (7). Do you run even 1km splits or start slower and finish faster? Disadvantages include interpreting this data and using it adjust your subsequent sessions. If you are doing short sprints or change of direction, this data is less accurate (8).
Power Output (Watts): Used extensively by cycling now, but has zero transfer to other sports. Can quantify the work done in each session and is useful in conjunction with distance covered and speed. It allows the cyclist to see if they are adapting to the training.
A simple but effective alternative
This would be a 10 on the sRPE scale
A simple measurement tool that I use is the Session Rating of Perceived Exertion (sRPE).
This was first ventured in 1998 by researchers in Milwaukee when trying to quantify training load and identify correlations with overtraining (9).
These researchers faced the same problems already identified about measurement, only some of the tools and technology have changed since. They were trying to identify how much training could be done before an increase in illnesses occurred within athletes.
They found that each athlete had a “training threshold” unique to them and that if they trained above it, illnesses were far more likely to occur. Retrospectively, 84% of illnesses could be explained by a preceding spike in Training Load (TL) above the individual threshold.
Subsequent research has refined the detail of the sRPE.
Her is a quick look at 3 of the variables that were collected from their research and that I have used (the 4th Training Strain I have yet to find useful, but it may be for others).
1.Training Load (TL) = sRPE x duration (mins) of the session. Measured by individual sessions and a daily/ weekly total.
2. Standard Deviation (SD) = how much difference there is between the sessions compared to the average session.
3. Training Monotony (TM)= Average daily training load/ SD
Training Load uses a modified scale of Borg’s Rating of Perceived Exertion as the basis of sRPE (10, Table1). Athletes can gauge quite well how hard their session was with only a small amount of practice; it is best done 30 minutes after a session has finished, to allow a more reflective and accurate approach to be taken.
This needs to be measured after every training session and recorded. A daily and weekly total then needs to be calculated.
Table 1 Modified Borg scale of Session RPE
Session RPE scale
0
Rest
1
Really Easy
2
Easy
3
Moderate
4
Sort of Hard
5
Hard
6
7
Really hard
8
9
Really, really hard
10
Just like my hardest race
Standard Deviation is a statistical tool that is necessary to allow us to calculate the Training Monotony. I was a bit concerned about the Maths at the start, but setting it up on the spreadsheet was easy enough using the inbuilt formulae. Standard Deviation was the only part that needed refreshing in my memory, having last used it 30 years ago.
Training Monotony is a very important number that shows how much or how little variation occurs within the training. The dangers of monotonous training were first found in racehorses but have since been found in endurance athletes too (11-13). There is a psychological component to Overtraining and doing the same type of training too often with little variation appears to be a big factor.
The TM figure should be as close to 1.0 as possible. This shows that you have lots of variation between your days. On paper, you may plan a variety of sessions, but each day and potentially each week could end up being very similar in Training Load and therefore you have Training Monotony.
The advantage of sRPE is that you can compare effort across different types of sessions: running, swimming, weight training and cycling. This allows an overall look at the total work done in a week, rather than adding up different forms of data from individual sessions and trying to make sense of it all. This is especially useful in multi-discipline athletes as you will see in the case study.
Case study
Modern Pentathlon: shooting, riding, swimming, fencing and running.
A 23-year-old Modern Pentathlete who has recently started full-time work.
Previously she was able to rest in between sessions and manage her week around training. Now she has to train before and after work and at weekends. Concerned with how this may add to the overall load, we decided to try using sRPE to monitor load and variety.
Here are her results from two consecutive weeks of training, and comments about how we have adapted as a result.
Week 1
Day
Session
Duration
SRPE
Session TL
Daily TL
Monday 5th
swimming
50
4
200
470
weights
40
6
240
shooting
15
2
30
Tuesday 6th
swimming
45
5
225
395
running
35
4
140
shooting
15
2
30
Wednesday 7th
swimming
45
4
180
390
weights
60
3
180
shooting
15
2
30
Thursday
swimming
60
7
420
620
running
40
4
160
shooting
20
2
40
Friday
swimming
35
5
175
355
riding
60
3
180
Saturday
running
45
4
180
180
Sunday (rest day)
riding
90
3
270
270
Summary
Total TL
2060
Average Daily TL
294.29
SD Daily TL
140.65
Training Monotony
2.09
Week 2
Day
Session
Duration
SRPE
Session TL
Daily TL
Monday
running
40
6
240
620
weights
50
7
350
shooting
15
2
30
Tuesday
swimming
50
7
350
605
shooting
15
2
30
running intervals
45
5
225
Wednesday
swimming
50
9
450
730
weight lifting
50
4
200
Speed drills
20
4
80
Thursday
running
40
6
240
490
riding
50
5
250
Friday
running
40
4
160
180
shooting
10
2
20
Saturday
swimming
60
3
180
660
fencing (competition)
120
4
480
Sunday
0
200
riding
50
4
200
Summary
Total TL
2995
Average Daily TL
427.86
SD Daily TL
222.26
Training Monotony
1.93
The main difference between Week 1 and Week 2 was the fencing competition on the 2nd Saturday which she won. The idea was to use this as a “tough” training environment, but in the end she won comfortably.
Other differences can occur with seemingly small changes. For example, by adding 10 extra minutes to her Monday weights, with a small increase in intensity, the actual training load increased by 46%!
Week 1 Monday weights
40
6
240
Week 2 Monday weights
50
7
350
A similar thing happened on the following morning’s swim session, resulting in an increase of 55%!
Week 1 Tuesday
swimming
45
5
225
Week 2 Tuesday
swimming
50
7
350
What should happen is that looking at these two increases, a corresponding decrease should take place on the Wednesday. Instead, she carried on as normal and actually increased the workload due to a tough swimming session, going from TL 390 to TL 730 a whopping 87% increase.
But, going into the competition she did reduce training somewhat over the Thursday and Friday in week 2 compared to week 1 and got the desired result.
Riding a horse is not ‘rest’.
The training monotony is too high for both weeks (1.93 and 2.09); we need to move this closer to 1.0. There is only one really hard day with TL over 700, but several in the 600s, none in the zeros, 100s or 500s.
The “rest day” of riding in week 1 was not resting enough with TL 270 due to the amount of time spent on the horse. We shall look closely at how to add more variety, and I will reinforce the need to “rest” and that easy means easy.
There are three key points for readers to note from this case study:
1. Small individual changes can make a big difference in total over the week.
2. The results must be recorded immediately and looked at; so that changes can be made to the following day’s training.
3. Training Monotony creeps up on you if you are not careful. Whilst individual sessions are different, the TL needs to differ day-to-day too.
Summary
Technology is developing rapidly and so is its availability to recreational athletes. It is easy to get caught up in measuring things without understanding if and how they affect your overall goal. Using sRPE may be a simple tool that allows you to get an overall picture and ensure that you have plenty of variety in your training.
This should be used to compare results on an individual basis, rather than using it to compare athletes. There is no “one size fits all” training plan. Athletes respond differently and so the loads will differ for optimal training.
Alternating easier and harder days is a fundamental training principle, with hard being hard and easy being easy. This will allow you to train effectively over longer periods of time which then leads to better results.
Why do I need to start pre-season strength training?
Well, ideally you won’t be starting from scratch. Hopefully, you have been doing your foundation work throughout the off-season.
This means that you are moving efficiently and can control your body through a full range of motion.
Now, as we saw last week, we are looking to make you more robust. This will allow you to do those movements Faster, Further or with Resistance.
Strength training will make you more resistant to injury too. This is true of all sports, and if you are a junior player or female, you might think “strength training isn’t for me”.
But females are 4-7 times more likely to get Knee injuries than males so strength training is an essential part of helping prevent ACL injuries (See Free ebook on S&C for females here).
If you are able to move Faster, and Further and against Resistance (gravity, another person) and you are less likely to be injured, you will be a better player.
Getting stronger does not necessarily mean getting bigger (if you want to get bigger for Rugby, then see here).
Key message: Strength training is essential for all athletes. The type of strength training differs depending on age/stage and sport.
What exercises should I be doing?
This very much depends on your age, stage of development and the sport you play. But certain principles are important:
Work the whole body, not just isolated parts.
The body is a very complicated system, it is not a series of individual actions or jigsaw pieces.
Your strength programme should reflect this. Exercises like squats, jumps and pull-ups use lots of different movements together.
If you are sitting or lying down doing exercises, you are not using your whole body. The bench is good for doing step-ups, not for doing 80% of your exercises! You can sit on it between doing proper work.
Start in the middle and work out.
A weak trunk means that anytime you try to generate power in the upper body, or hold a position like a tackle, or keep your body upright when running, you will struggle.
The trunk must be trained in 3 planes, and with slow, fast and stabilising actions. This medicine ball sequence is an example of how to get your ‘core’ stronger in a relevant way to sport
If you are making your athletes hold a plank for more than 2 minutes then you are wasting their time and yours.
Progress according to individual pace
Not every athlete will be good at every exercise. They will move faster along the progression with some exercises, and slower at others. Recognise this and adapt your programme accordingly.
For example, if some of your team are having trouble with squats, they could do Goblet squats, the intermediate group could do overhead squats, the advanced group could do squat jumps.
Mini bands are a good tool to help balance and control.
Combine big movements with single leg/single arm work.
It is tempting to just work on big lifts because you can test and measure them. But you need to make sure that any strength gain is applicable to the field/court, or is helping to prevent injury.
You could do a sequence of Dumbbell squats (2 legs), single-leg squats, Dumbbell Rotational Press (2 arms), lawnmowers (single arm with rotation). If you followed this with a bear crawl into a sprint, then your body is learning to apply its newfound strength.
Overload is not just adding weight.
Overload can be Spatial, Temporal or Resistive (more detail here). The answer is more than just “add more weight” or “you need to be able to squat twice your body weight”! It depends on your sport and your position.
E.g. A rugby union winger might need to work on running around people, so she works on temporal and spatial overload. A tight head prop has to work on absolute strength so resistive overload is needed.
Everything works, but nothing works forever.
It doesn’t matter how good your plan is, if you are doing the same exercises, in the same sequence in 4 weeks time, it won’t be as effective. Not only will your body have adapted, but your team will be bored stiff! (This is one of Dan John’s philosophies.)
Try doing a series of 14- day or 21-day cycles that allow progressions and variety to be built in, whilst giving the body sufficient time and stimuli to cause adaptation.
Get your Free pdf “Start Getting Strong in Pre-Season” with 5 Training Session Plans here
What about strength testing?
If you have read the above and have a good idea of what type of strength training your team will be doing, then it is relatively easy to test strength.
Do not test your team with exercises they have never seen or done before.
They will either: get a bad result which is irrelevant due to the learning effect or; worse still, get injured in the process.
If you are working with junior/ developmental athletes the worst reason to use a test is “because the first team do it”.
Time is precious, and testing lots of athletes takes a long time. I always prefer testing in the sessions, rather than having a “testing day“. That way the athletes are warmed up and I record what they are doing as part of their session.
You don’t have to do all the tests at the same time.
Example tests (not Gospel, remember the points above)
Standing broad jump (yes, I know you might call this power but it measures spatial ability) 2 leg or 1 leg.
Pull-ups: Overhand, with extra weight if needed, or inverted rows for those who can’t do 1.
Squat: number of body weight for juniors, a loaded variant (back, front,overhead) for experienced lifters.
A push: hindu press ups, or behind head press are currently my favourites. Bench press is just not applicable, military press can lead to convoluted body positions to get good score.
Side lying leg lifts
Side leg lifts: Get into a press up position, lift one hand off the floor and point to the ceiling, move that side’s foot onto the other one. Your body is now in a straight line perpendicular to the floor, resting on one outstretched arm. Lift the top leg up to head height and down again. Target is 25 on each side.
This seems to quickly identify those with poor single leg balance and control.
Throw: A medicine ball or a heavy implement, either chest pass or overhead, but check how much of the body is being used. Whole-body is fine if that is what you are trying to measure.
5RM, 3RM or 1RM? I wouldn’t do 1RM tests at the beginning of pre-season, it is a good way of getting people hurt: they also can’t walk for 3 days afterwards! I prefer doing a 5RM as part of a session, or a max number in a minute for beginners.
Choose a test that matches your programme, rather than design a programme to match your test!
On Wednesday March 18th, 2020 the UK’s Prime Minister announced that all schools would be shut from Friday afternoon for at least 3 weeks.
Head Teachers around the country frantically scrambled for information, ideas and solutions to help their pupils, staff and families cope.
I realised that I would not be able to coach gymnastics at Willand Primary School the following week, so emailed the Head Teacher, Anne Hawkins, offering a solution of ‘3 x10 minute p.e. videos a week‘ to help them.
My phone rang seconds after I hit ‘send’ as Ms Hawkins responded with a ‘thank you‘. I was offering a solution to just one of her many problems. I outlined what I had in mind, and she seemed enthusiastic as well as relieved.
24 hours later and the schools still had not received guidance from the government.
As we were not in total lock down yet (that wasn’t announced until after 8pm on Monday 23rd March), I arranged to film two of the videos on the Saturday morning in our Village Hall. We used two of our club members, plus some other pupils who live nearby.
Ms Hawkins watched the videos, gave her approval and I planned the next 7 sessions. You can see the very first video here:
My plan divided the lessons into 3 categories:
Movement: Locomotor progressions.
Physical Fitness: strength, balance, mobility.
Skills: Balls and implements and how to throw, catch and apply in games.
I wanted to include things that parents and children could do together. Two Mums had asked me previously about posting short tutorials for games, one of whom had said to me, ” I don’t play catch with my son because I don’t know how and he would get bored after 15 minutes.”
I viewed this 3-week break as an opportunity for children to learn some fundamental skills and movements that would help them return to school physically better than when they left.
In short, I wanted to put the physical and education back in p.e.
You can see the outline for week 1 here:
Week 1 Lesson plan
Of course, the plan lasted exactly 1 day. Then we found out that we were in full lock down for 3 weeks, which then got extended to 6 weeks total.
Instead of filming me and a small group of pupils in the local area, I was left with my house and my 10-year old Stoic son, Jack. My long-suffering wife, Sarah, was roped into filming the videos.
Stoic Jack in action
Could do better
As the 3 weeks, evolved into 6 and then, finally, 16-weeks we learnt, adapted and tried to improve what we were doing. We were operating under several constraints:
The weather (for the first 8 weeks, it was Scorchio).
Three individuals being ready, willing and able to film at the same time. Those of you with families at home may empathise that all was not ‘sweetness and light‘ just before filming time.
Technology! The first thing I did was to order a clip-on microphone to improve the sound quality. Phone storage, broadband upload speeds and human error (Sorry, forgot to turn the mic on) added no little stress.
Mic error halfway through
Time seemed to be against us, despite being in lockdown, and we tried to film the videos in one take.
This had the advantage of showing real-life mistakes and spontaneity. It had the disadvantage of me failing to either teach the people in front of me or making the object of the lesson clear to viewers.
Getting in the swing of things
Several weeks after starting, and Willand Primary School had embraced the Google Classrooms technology. I had been uploading the videos onto the Willand PE Playlist but we didn’t seem to be integrated with the teachers.
I improved this by emailing the separate lessons to the school with a synopsis a week in advance. This gave the teachers time to review and use.
From week 7, we could use a few other pupils who lived in our road and were still off school. This added variety, conversation and unexpected feedback into the lessons. The videos show me teaching and adapting which is useful for other teachers.
We could now show pupils in year 3, 4 and 5 and occasionally year 1. This was better for the pupils and teachers, rather than just watching an ‘older boy‘ do all the demonstrations (and an even older man).
Our regular guest stars in this video.
Guest stars
Speaking of guest stars, I was in weekly contact with my GAIN colleague, Physical Education teacher Andy Stone. He was doing a similar project for his secondary school in the USA.
I added his videos to the Willand PE playlist as they are superb for children aged 10-14. His teaching of movements and the systematic progressions are something that are missing from PE lessons here in the UK.
I also spoke to Vern Gambetta several times and Greg Thompson, who we also featured. Their insights and support were much needed practically and emotionally.
And finally
Tomorrow we film our last lesson: #48. 16 weeks after I first contacted Ms Hawkins.
I would like to express my deepest thanks to Ms Hawkins and all the staff of Willand Primary School for their support and encouragement. Thanks to the guest stars of the videos for their enthusiastic participation. Thanks to Willand Village Hall for offering their venue when we were allowed!
And a very special thank you to my wife, Sarah for filming and to my son, Jack for being the demonstrator in every video. Without them we could not have provided all these lessons.
I hope that the current and future pupils of Willand can use these videos ongoing and help them become physically literate, active and fit for the future.
Well, ideally you won’t be starting from scratch. Hopefully, you have been doing your
This very much depends on your age, stage of development and the sport you play. But certain principles are important:
Progress according to individual pace
Overload is not just adding weight.
Example tests (not Gospel, remember the points above)
