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25th March 2025
The father of a 9-year-old boy asked me if I could coach his son 1-1 with his running technique. I said, ‘No.’ Boys that age should be playing outside with their friends, not stuck in an awkward situation with an experienced coach and an expectant father watching on. Unfortunately, the boy attends a private school […]
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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 into fundamental work, and finally into the full training programme.
Client Testimonials
Georgina Rozario: England Scrum Half
I had the pleasure of having James as my first s&c coach when I was at University in Plymouth. I worked with him for 3 years and learnt everything I now know about training to the best of my ability. When I first saw James I was identified as a talented rugby player but had various injury and illness problems to contend with. By the end of my time with him I had become an athlete and later received my first international cap against the U.S.A.
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[…] 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 […]