Muscles Strengthening exercises: why the 5km run is not the health panacea.

Muscle-strengthening exercises such as bodyweight exercises, exercise bands, and dumbbell, barbell and machine resistance training exercises have been shown to impact a variety of health outcomes including: · Improved muscular strength. · Bone mineral density (stronger bones). · A decrease in all-cause mortality (the chances of dying from health-related diseases). · Improvements in cardio-metabolic health…

Read More

Is there such a thing as sport specific training?

football fitness Devon

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 sports people 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.

Read More

Middle distance running: science, myths & practice

“Why get obsessed with details if they don’t matter yet?” Steve Magness, at GAIN 2016 presenting on “Current concepts of endurance training“. I have been privileged to meet up with Steve for 3 GAIN conferences, and his thoughts have greatly shaped the work I do with our Middle Distance Running group. Here are some of…

Read More

Beware of the Mom Taper

“Jodie can’t make training tonight because she is exhausted and worried about her homework deadlines”

soccer mum trainingA phone call, text or email late in the day from the Mum, and your plans for the night’s training session are scuppered. This is extremely frustrating as a coach. It happened to me 3 times last week alone.

Read More

Why most hamstring exercises don’t work for running.

hamstring injury prevention

The Great Hamstring Saver?

hamstring injury preventionA 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.

Read More

The 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 More

Strength and Power in Rugby: Part 3

rugby power trainingThe Rugby World Cup is in it’s knockout stages. National Fitness adviser Simon Worsnop looks at current strength and power measurements.

Strength and Power Levels

Since the onset of full time professionalism in both sports strength levels have increased so that today’s players possess higher strength levels than similar aged recreational players

Read More

What is your number 1 coaching concern?

“If in doubt, do no harm”

On Tuesday I asked a group of coaches from different sports what their main concern was in regards to strength training.  It came down to these two:

  • Not hurting my players
  • I don’t know where to begin

With so much information out there, a lot of it conflicting, these coaches were not sure how to begin, or what was appropriate for their players.

I come across this a lot. Parents, teachers and coaches really do find this difficult.

Read More

Stuck in a rut? A very simple solution.

swimI have been taking my daughter swimming every week for over 4 years now. She loves the water and loves spending time with me playing in the pool. She can do her various styles of “swimming” but nothing that relates to lengths or widths. I have been struggling to get her to do more.

Read More

Training young athletes: Part 5:Kelvin Giles

Strength and conditioning for children appears to be a popular topic. Unfortunately, short cuts are often desired (4 hour International Athlete anyone?). One of the common, if unpopular, themes from the guest Coaches this week has been fundamentals, process and detail. Today’s author is a great exponent of that.

Read More