Blog

Welcome to the Excelsior blog. It is a mix of current research and thoughts on Athlete and Coach Development, Strength and Conditioning and personal reflections.

Comments are welcome (please leave your name) and you can subscribe by clicking on the RSS feed.

Thanks for taking the time to read it.

James Marshall

1. Training mixed groups

   21st July 2010 8:12 am

   It is quite challenging training groups of athletes from different sports and at different ages and stages of development as a group.

   1 Comment | Read More | book review

2. Athlete empowerment- gone too far?

   20th July 2010 11:21 am

   One of the buzz catchphrases for the last year has been “athlete empowerment” when dealing with young athletes. The young athletes (a loose term, most of them are recreational games players)are supposed to be able to choose what type of training programme they follow, and even give feedback on it.

   Has this gone too far?

   Is this an excuse for athletes to dictate how and where they train,

   1 Comment | Read More | equestrian, fitness, reading

3. PE Teacher Inset- Stanbridge Earls School

   1st July 2010 2:53 pm

   I did a 3 hour inset last week with the PE staff at Stanbridge Earls school.

   We looked at the principles behind LTAD and how physical development matched this model.

   We then looked at ways of identifying structural problems in the school children and how we could improve their structural integrity.

   1 Comment | Read More | creativity, running

4. Planning and Methods of Physical Preparation for Combat Sports- Mike Favre, Uksca conference

   14th June 2010 8:47 am

   Mike Favre works at the University of Michigan, and delivered this lecture on combat sports preparation, specifically looking at wrestling and judo.

   Having some considerable experience and knowledge in this area, I went along not expecting much, but open to some different perspectives.

   0 Comments | Read More | combat

5. Vladimir Issurin: Block Periodisation, UKSCA lecture.

   11th June 2010 1:54 pm

   Vladimir Issurin is a Coach with the Israeli Olympic Committee and Masters swimmer. His lecture compared traditional periodisation with block periodisation.

   He started by comparing training and competition days between 1980-1990 and from 1991-2000 across a variety of sports.

   3 Comments | Read More | overtraining, periodisation

6. UKSCA conference review

   10th June 2010 9:06 am

   Last weekend I attended 2 days of the annual UKSCA conference in Milton Keynes.There were a variety of lectures, breakout sessions and also some poster presentations.

   This was the fourth conference of theirs that I have attended, and I probably took the least away. ( I wasn’t going to go, but my alternative course was postponed).

   1 Comment | Read More | ballet

7. Milk makes you run faster

   2nd June 2010 12:28 pm

   I don’t think it was milk that made Marion Jones run fast.

   Be careful before setting someone up on a pedestal and working with young people.

   Everyone is only human.

   0 Comments | Read More | combat sports, goal setting, Issurin

8. Role Models- Coach versus athlete

   25th May 2010 3:00 pm

   Who would you rather have preparing you for a World Championship Boxing match: Cus D’Amato or Mike Tyson?

   At a recent level 1 S&C coaching course I brought up the idea of athletic development and having an idea of a great athlete to try and model yourself on. We also discussed how much of a role model a Coach should be and what this should entail.

   For me Tyson would provide a visual, psychological and emotional imprint of a boxer.

   2 Comments | Read More | doping, equestrian, hindu press ups, marion jones

9. Channelling the Competitive Streak

   24th May 2010 8:43 am

   I was speaking to a couple of young athletes last week on how they were faring, and how they adjust to learning new skills. Both gave examples of when they were returning from a layoff, or trying to practice a new skill but then being put into competition with other players. The dilemma is trying get better for the long term, but not wanting to lose in the short term.

   0 Comments | Read More | ampk, physiology

10. Rest is rest.

    13th May 2010 1:52 pm

    There is a common theme amongst athletes: They don’t work hard enough when they are supposed to and they don’t rest properly when they are supposed to.

    You get a lot of “slogging”, instead of short, sharp hard, focussed sessions, followed by adequate rest and recovery.  This is a key cause of overtraining:long, slow monotonous training, with insufficient adaptation. Worse still, none of this actually helps improve sporting performance.

    1 Comment | Read More | nfl combine