Main Menu
Latest Blog Entry
1st June 2023
A guest post from Kath Maguire. Kath is the parent of one of our club’s gymnasts. She asked about doing some volunteering a couple of months ago and whether there was a course she could do. Here are her reflections from the day. “I’ve been thinking about volunteering for a while now but as it’s […]
User login
Making athletes robust
ro·bust
(r
-b
st
, rbst
)
adj.
1. Full of health and strength; vigorous.
2. Powerfully built; sturdy.
3. Requiring or suited to physical strength or endurance: robust labour.
4. Rough or crude; boisterous: a robust tale.
5. Marked by richness and fullness; full-bodied: a robust wine.
[Latin rbustus, from rbur, rbus, oak, strength; see reudh- in Indo-European roots.]
bustus, from rbur, rbus, oak, strength; see reudh- in Indo-European roots.]ro·bustly adv.
ly adv.ro·bustness n.
ness n.Robust is a word I use a lot in working with young athletes– giving an idea of a goal to work towards in the short term before we develop them further. Unfortunately, a lot of them don’t know what it means!
Naseem Taleb in his book antifragile discounts robust and resilient because they just maintain the status quo. Instead “antifragile” means you actually develop and improve as a result of stress.
England Hockey talk about “robustness training” but then send their players on endless jogs around the pitch, then having them endure 6 hours of low level “busy work” on camps.
I work on an integrated approach, developing young players progressively, starting with a movement asessment, then intofundamental work, and finally into the full training programme.
Client Testimonials
Jenny McGeever
James has been my strength and conditioning coach since June 2009 and during this time he has provided me with constant support and helped me develop as an athlete, from Under 17 international level to senior international. He is currently helping me with my transition from fencer to Modern Pentathlete.
More
Comments
[…] 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 […]