Tag Archive: strength and conditioning course

1. Athletic Development Workshop at Christ’s Hospital

   14th September 2016 1:42 pm Leave a Comment

   Athletic Development in action at Christ’s Hospital

   

   Lunging and bracing

   Last week I ran 2 workshops for some of the Sports Scholars at Christ’s Hospital School in Horsham, West Sussex. Whilst the title was Athletic Development, the content was all about teaching the pupils about movement.

   Movement is the foundation of physical education (p.e.). So you could just say I taught two p.e. classes.

   The Head of Sport Dave Messenger has previously done a Level 1 Coaching Strength and Conditioning for Sport course with me, as have 8 members of his staff. I shall be back there next month running the course for another 10 coaches.

   

   Partner work

   Here is the lesson plan for the first half of the Athletic Development Workshop. With the themes.
   Introduction: Why do you train? Sport is an expression of physical ability, it rarely develops it apart from the very beginners and those unfit. Get fit to play sport, rather than play sport to get fit.
   Task1: Skipping, forwards backwards. sideways. With partner count to 4s.
   What sport skills are used? Break down of skills. Try again observing partner foot position (barefoot).

   

   Squat practice

   Task 2: Tuck sequence, hold shoulder stand for 3. Rock to stand: with partner.
   How strong are your legs?
   Partner squats
   Exploratory rolls on floor. Squat, roll, stand. explore.

   Task 3: Walking game with chaos. In 3s. Walk around, tag, no tag back. Then skipping, then running 3 steps into space.
   Decision making? Spatial awareness. What happens at the end?

   

   Bracing and supporting

   Task 4: Absorbing and receiving force. Walk to brake. Jump up and land quietly. Crawling patterns. Kneel to fall, Partner lean and fall in 3s.
   Partner sequence: cartwheel over, crawl under, hips up and down.

   Thanks to Dave and all his staff and pupils for making me feel welcome and throwing themselves into the workshop with gusto.

   If you would like me to run a similar workshop a your school, please email me to discuss.

2. Getting started in strength and conditioning

   31st January 2014 10:27 am Leave a Comment

    S&C qualification:”There is more to circuit training than just getting tired”

   was something I kept explaining to coaches on the recent level 1 coaching strength and conditioning for sport course.

   I always say that any idiot can get people tired (and plenty do), but if you want your athletes to progress effectively, then there has to be a plan.

   The group of coaches on this course came from many different sports and were used to doing things a certain way. Whilst everyone wants to know “is this a good exercise?“, few ask “what is the aim of this session and how can I plan accordingly?”

   Power circuits

   

   Specific circuits for Netball

   People like using the word power in training programmes. So I see under aim “A power endurance circuit for netball players” and then the session designed as 1 minute of work, 10 seconds of rest for a sequence of 8 exercises!

   The exercises then include squat jumps and the plank (I saw this in action recently with a so called strength and conditioning coach taking the “High performance ” netball squad!).

   • I have no idea what power endurance means.
   • No one does squat jumps well for a minute.
   • Plank: really? Hardly helps develop power, and anything over 15 seconds is a waste of time.

   So, the emphasis on the course is to help the coaches understand that the aim of the session needs to be very clear. The session plan then needs to reflect that. The exercise selection also needs to be clear. Lunges in a strength circuit are fine. Split jumps in a power circuit are fine. Split jumps in a muscular endurance circuit are less so.

   The Prison Warm Up

   

   Movement warm up

   If we have 15 minutes to do our warm up, then we need to make sure it is effective.

   Often we may arrive late to a venue, or if we are doing multi events, we are only given 15 minutes notice that we are up next.

   Dan John in his book “Never let go” talks about prison workouts. If you are only given 15 minutes a day to exercise, you had better strip it down to the essentials.

   I find that some athletes (and coaches) love warm ups that keep going. I got the coaches on this course to think about where their athletes needed to be at the end of 15 minutes.

   We also know that they have either driven to the venue, or been sat down at a desk all day. This influences how we start the warm up.

   A combination of general work, specific exercises, games and then drills leading into the following session is where we got to.

   The coaches delivered their initial sessions on the second afternoon, with lots of good practice being shown. They now have time to go away, practice, reflect and improve before their assessment day.

   • How to pass a coaching course 
   • How to use gymnastics as part of your warm up

   Please contact us if you wish to take part in this course in the future.

3. Are you a Dot Collector or a Dot Connector?

   17th September 2012 1:24 pm 2 Comments

   Connect Dots, Don’t just collect them

   This came up time and again over the weekend as aspiring coaches sat their Level 2 S&C exam on Saturday and when we ran a 3 hour intensive workshop on Athletic Development on Sunday.

   Anyone can go to a workshop, read a book or watch a YouTube video and get a drill or exercise.

   A good coach knows how to assess whether this fits into their System of training, and if so how and when to use it.

   This is the difference between just collecting dots and knowing how to connect them.

   (Thanks to Seth Godin for analogy)

   Lessons learnt in the last year

   Sunday saw our first Excelsior intensive workshop for coaches who have attended our Level 1 or Level 2 Strength and Conditioning Courses.

   I introduced an overview of Athletic Development and what I have learnt over the last year, especially lessons learnt from GAINV

   This included looking at:

   • Power development and resistive, spatial and temporal overloads.
   • The need for work on Force Reduction, not just Force Production.
   • Coaching and how to improve it.
   • Nutrition advice for athletes based on real world situations.

   This was not a comprehensive review, but more of a stimulus to spark off ideas and thoughts for the coaches.

   Agility Principles and Progressions

   Having given an overview, I then extrapolated agility and looked at it in much more detail. I explained the three stages:

   1. Fundamentals
   2. Motor pattern development
   3. Autonomics

   Each stage has various aspects that need to be included, but none can be addressed if the previous stage is not firm or entrenched.

   I spent some time looking at each stage and giving the underlying reasons why each is important and the components of each.

   By having a systematic approach to agility the coach can then select the right exercise or drill for the athlete/ team at each stage. Rather than doing STUFF.

   We then spent over an hour going through this in practice. I emphasised the need to Coach each aspect, each drill and each player.

   A lot of the time I just watch people going through the motions and not trying to get better.

   It was good to see the Coaches grasping the concepts and connecting the dots, learning what to look for and how all the activities were inter related.

   Community of Practice

   We then wrapped up by discussing how we were going to implement and develop the Excelsior community of practice. 

   A community of practice is just a way of sharing ideas informally, it is free and is a recognised form of learning. A lot of best practices come from informal conversations or “coffee break coaching“.

   It was great to see the coaches sharing ideas and information at the end of the day. If anything, it is soemtimes just to know that the problems you have aren’t unique!

   Any coach who has completed a level 1 or level 2 course gets free access to specific resources here. We are expanding this into idea sharing and problem solving by using the Google+ community and the workshops to really help each other develop and improve.

   Thanks to everyone who attended and contributed.

4. Sports Nutrition- Grow your own veg

   25th March 2010 9:58 am Leave a Comment

   As Andrew Hamilton remarked a couple of weeks ago on the blog festival with regards to sports nutrition: Walk before you run. It constantly amazes me how clueless young athletes are about simpel eating facts. One of the reasons is that society has beome distant from food in its natural state. Do youngsters go scrumping anymore? (that would combine the tree climbing for pulling strength and healthy eating!).

   One of the best ways to get people inetrested and knowledgeable about the food they eat is to grow your own veg.

   The BBC are running an excellent campaign here called Dig In. They are giving away free seed packets and tips on growing your own veg.

   You don’t require a farm, and allotment or even a garden to do this. The idea is to get everyone growing some sort of food.  I use old cider barrels cut in half and also tyres (free) filled with earth and compost and plant things there.

   The food will then be free- useful for all of us on budgets-, fresh and seasonal. The only thing required is a bit of patience.

   Why not get started now?