Blog
Pre-season speed training
“Don’t run the speed out of you”
Speed kills, and every coach wants a faster team. The best way to get a faster team is to recruit faster players. Failing that, get your existing players to run faster.
Your team needs to be able to run fast at the end of each half, not to be able to jog aimlessly. around.Traditionally pre-season training has started with long slow runs and then worked towards trying to get faster.
Read MoreIs the juice worth the squeeze? Strength & conditioning quotes
4 steps to get more agile in pre-season.
Its better to run round people than through them.
The ability to run “through spaces not faces” is very important in most field/court sports. You want to be agile enough to:
- Avoid being tackled
- Be able to get into position to stop your opponent
- Get to the ball.
Is your pre-season agility training helping you achieve this?
Read More“The true Art to what, how and why we do”: Jim Radcliffe
What it takes to be a successful strength and conditioning coach.
“People in support positions should be seen and not heard”
Jim Radcliffe at the beginning of his presentation on successful S&C coaching.
Why most hamstring exercises don’t work for running.
The Great Hamstring Saver?
A recent article in the New York Times hailed the Nordic Hamstring Exercise as the saviour of all athletes involved in explosive sports. Citing several published papers, the NYT suggests that this single exercise could put an end to the dreaded hamstring tear.
Strength and conditioning coaching course reflections
“Plyometricky: an exercise that purports to be elastic, but is performed slowly”
a new phrase coined last week on the level 2 Coaching Strength and Conditioning for Sport at Oxford Brookes University.
The candidates came up with that term when we were discussing the myriad of “power” exercises that are just slow jumps.
Read MoreThe fundamentals of acceleration mechanics
Coach Anderson was talking about his 100m speed training programme. His belief is that coaches only need to teach 1 model of sprint mechanics, get damn good at it, then add “subtle variations”when required, for example, in the 200 meters acceleration pattern or the 110 meter hurdles acceleration pattern
Read MoreTrue Grit
“Pentathlete Jenny McGeever overcomes adversity at French Open”
One of the most satisfying moments of my coaching career came 2 weekends ago, when one of our Excelsior athletes came 13th overall in Paris.
Jenny had been on a training camp with Pentathlon Ireland in Italy. She caught budget airline Vueling to Paris, who kindly lost her bag.
Now, here is what was in that bag:
Read More360° learning at GAIN in Houston
“You have to be comfortable being uncomfortable all the time”
Vern Gambetta from the GAIN Athletic Development Manual.
I have just returned from spending a week at my 4th GAIN conference, at Rice University, Houston, Texas.
My mind and body were pushed, pulled and stretched in many different directions.
Read More3 keys to Knee health
There are 3 key things to help keep your knees healthy:
To look after your knees, you need to
- Strengthen
- Stabilise
- Stretch
This week’s module of the Sports Training System includes more details on how to prevent knee injuries.
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