Archive for Athlete
Fact or Fallacy # 2: Knees shouldn’t go over toes during squatting or lunging!!
Posted by: | CommentsHere we go again…one of the most misguided statements made in health and fitness! By the way if you missed part one of this click here for a review on muscle tone!
Anyway, lets get on with the post!
In sport the knee projects over the toe regularly just look at MMA, wrestling, rugby, football, fencing etc etc and never is this issue identified as a major cause of injury. Yet when we take this into the gym environment people seem to take on this notion that the movement is bad for the knee.
The Japanese are often seem assuming the deep squat position for hours on end as a position of comfort and no knee injury epidemic is plaguing those guys! C’Mon, the human body is more resilient than that!!
Provided the individual in question has the adequate strength to control their body in this range of movement which they certainly should have when executing controlled movements with or without resistance under a coaches supervision, then you can assume that the movement is perfectly safe and indeed in these conditions can be extremely beneficial for the muscles around the knee and hip.
Whether as a coach you choose to prescribe squats/lunges etc with the knee moving in this way is your choice. It is generally thought that the more ankle flexion that occurs the more quadricep dominant the movement as opposed to hip and knee flexion with less ankle flexion which would be assumed to recruit the hip musculature more favourably. The second option is what many coaches would favour however the needs of the athlete and the sport in question will influence this decision, and not the notion of safety for the knee itself in a healthy individual.
Short and sweet today! Dont forget to sign up to my newsletter. Leave your email in the box below for your free S&C downloads.
BC
Quick Session # 5: Hypertrophy Supersets
Posted by: | CommentsHeres some supersets i’ve been using to develop hypertrophy with an emphasis still on strength.
A Back Squat x 5 reps
B Walking Lunge x 8 each leg
A Trap Bar Deadlift x 4 reps
B Single Leg Squat x 8 each leg
A Weighted Chin x 5 Reps
B DB Rows x 8 each arm
A Close Grip Bench with 4s eccentric x 6 reps
B Narrow Grip Push-Ups to failure
A DB Press x 5 reps
B Single Arm Barbell Power Press x 8 each arm
Most are a simple bilateral strength movement supersetted with a unilateral synergistic movement. Extremely simple but good old tough training that works!! We usually do 4 or 5 sets of these pairs and these are examples taken from a variety of sessions for a variety of athletes. At the moment I have basketballers, badminton players and combat athletes doing some of these and have used them a lot with rugby players.
Give em a go and leave a comment to let me know how you get on!
BC
Quick Session # 4
Posted by: | CommentsThis session is part of the elite badminton programme at carnegie for some of the players there. They are moving into an intro power phase hence the introduction of basic power movements into this session with an emphasis on general strength predominantly. Give it a go and let me know how you get on by leaving a comment below!
Brendan
Quick Session # 3
Posted by: | CommentsHeres a neat little basic strength session for you. Total body, superset based, give it a go and let me know if you enjoyed it by leaving a comment below! Ive used this session this week with one of my heavyweight MMA fighters preparing in his strength phase amongst other stuff too of course. Rest is pretty much minimal throughout, try to keep working and you will improve your work capacity and basic strength with this session.
So you want to be an S&C coach? Part 3: Continuing your development!
Posted by: | CommentsFirstly, if you’ve missed any of the past 2 parts you should go back and read them before you read this.
Click here for part 1 which is all about getting the knowledge required.
Click here for part 2 where I look at how you can get your coaching experience.
This post is all about once you’ve got some experience and are working in the industry, how do you keep on evolving and progressing into the coach that you really want to be.
We all have specialist areas of interest within the umbrella term of strength and conditioning coach. You need to have a level of competency in all the areas of job which are:
- Coaching and designing strength and power sessions and programmes.
- Coaching and designing speed, movement, and conditioning sessions and programmes.
- Rehabilitation and injury mechanisms for your sports and all sports.
- Periodisation and annual planning for the training units above.
- Nutrition, lifestyle support, psychology basic understanding and application.
- Underpinning knowledge of anatomy, physiology, biomechanics, S&C principles.
- Monitoring and recovery and principles behind these.
- Comminication with coaches/athletes and clients. For some this comes easy, for others it has to be the primary area of focus as this is what really gets you results!!
- S&C for specific populations- Rugby, MMA, Youth, etc etc.
But within these areas (and you may include more than me) most people will have a specialist interest. For me it is the strength and power training as well as movement and agility training. But I also have a strong interest in nutrition and injury prevention too. There’s a lot to keep up to date with and there are so many sources of information out there to read/watch/listen to.
The hardest thing as a full time S&C coach for me is finding the time to keep up to date, but at the same time I personally believe that it is absolutely imperative to do so!! So managing your schedule to include reading time, reflection time etc is very important. You’ll never have as much free time as when you are studying and immediately following your studies when you’re looking for work, so I would make the most of it and try to get through as many books and DVDs as you can!
I still read a fair few books, but I find it easier to digest information through blogs, websites and DVD’s.
Here are a few websites/blogs that I would highly recommend you check out:
- Vern Gambettas blog on athletic development- a pioneer in the field with a huge amount of experience.
- Eric Cressey Blog- Eric comes up with some gems of knowledge generally on the corrective exercise side of things.
- Mike Boyles strengthcoach.com website- another pioneer in the field and a wealth of information on this site.
- Strengthcoach.com podcast- a great resource to listen to on your way to work.
- Strengthpower hour podcast- a great resource featuring the one and only Bill Kraemer. Well worth listening to purely for his gems of wisdom.
- NSCA online journals- a very good resource in general that you can tap into quickly and get some good info from.
- Professional Strength and Conditioning (UKSCA Journal), most of you will be members but the journal has good overviews of research areas that are worth reading.
- Precision Nutrition- John Berardi’s website has some great nutritional information for coaches that I’d highly recommend.
- EliteFTS website- a must for the strength and power training, this site has some great practical info (including a handful of articles from myself 
)
- TNation- A bit of a bodybuilding site but some good authors on there contributing some good stuff all be it with a physique slant. Still well worth checking out though.
- UK Athletics coaching website: Some great podcasts and articles on speed training, strength training recovery and more on here.
Reflection is the Way Forward!
One of the best ways I have found to improve my coaching is to find the time to regularly reflect on what it is I’m doing. I don’t mean sitting cross legged with some whale music in the background, unless you really feel the need, its more about finding 5 minutes to think about how that session went, or how your exercise selection could be improved for the next phase of training. I always carry a diary with me and regularly write notes when I have an idea for a movement or exercise for a specific population. I also scribble down websites to check out when people mention them to me in the gym, and anything else for that matter. I keep the pad by my bed at night too so that when I wake up in the night I can remember the ideas that come up (and pass it to my therapist). Incorporating this into your week will improve your performance as a coach, so make time to do it!
Continuing Education:
This is of course a key concept, not only for developing as a coach, but also for maintaining our accredited coach status with any reputable organization.
Here’s a few courses that I’d recommend you check out along with a load of books that are worth a read too:
- Mobilis Performance Injury prevention workshops: These are written by top physio Martin Haines. This guy is an encyclopedia of knowledge and experience. The courses are good, some is difficult to apply in an S&C setting but worth the investment.
- UKSCA Annual Conference: Always an excellent couple of days and a bargain at the price. Duncan French has done a great job organizing it these last few years.
- Movement Dynamics Physical Competency Workshop with Kelvin Giles: Kelvins philosophy has been a great influence on many coaches including myself. Get to his workshops if you can.
- Optimal Shoulder Performance- Cressey and Reinold. Another great product from these guys and well worth the investment if your are interested in this area.
- High Power Plyometrics DVD: Jim Radcliffe is an authority in the area. Fairly basic but good overview of plyometrics.
- Training for Warriors DVD- Martin Rooney: A good voerview of what a practicing coach is doing with their athletes. Great watching!
- Kelvin Giles Movement Dynamics- Physical Competency screening and athletic development manuals- The best screening process out there in my opinion from a leader in the athletic development field.
- Practical Programming for strength training- Rippletoe: A great guide to periodisation from a practicing coach. Well worth a read.
- Starting Strength- Roppletoe: An in depth look at the basic barbell exercises which form the cornerstone of most S&C programmes. Great investment.
- Developmental Essentials: IYCA manual: With contributions from some great coaches, this manual is a must if you work with young athletes.
- Tapering and peaking for optimal performance- Mujika: This is the text to get if you wanrt to learn from the authority on tapering. Truly a great resource.
- Athletic Development- Vern Gambetta. Need I say more? Buy the book.
- Nutrient Timing- Ivy and Portman: Released a while ago but a good look at the science and practice behind nutient timing.
- Sport Physiologuy for coaches- Sharkey and Gaskill: Some interesting stuff on monitoring training loads as well as basic physiology which is always good to go over again.
- Theory and application of modern strength and power methods- Thibaudeau: Great little text on strength and power training with a good overview on the more commonly used methods.
- Stretch to win- Frederick: Really good book on fascial and general stretching methods. Highly recommended.
- Qualitative analysis of human movement- Knudson. A great look at kinematic biomechanical analysis of movement. Helped me a lot during my MSc studies.
- Stability, Sport and Performance Movement- Elphinston: Great book recently released from a UK physio covering screening info, progressions and regressions from late stage rehab through to healthy.
How do you want to develop?
There’s a load of different topics covered on this list from strength training to stability and stretching to nutrition. All of which are part of the S&C coaches scope of works so to speak. You need to have a good understanding of all these areas from and theory and applied perspective. All the learning material you need was covered in part 1 of this series. When you are coaching everyday you will find the gaps in your knowledge through your experience which should lead you to the right resources to check out. Following this it is down to you as the individual to decide which areas you want to develop more or less than others which for most of us will be based on our personal interests as we all like to read the things we are interested in. However its still important to keep in touch with other areas that are important within the role. For me I’ll always be happy to read up on athletic development, strength and power training, and sport specific S&C, sometimes I need to push myself to read up on nutrition as there’s always something else that you can put to the top of the pile, even though I have an interest in this.
Where are you and where do you want to be?
Identifying your areas of development is a better way to develop your knowledge than simply reading random stuff you come across on the internet or wherever else. Its nice to have time to read what you want to read, I think this is very important, but I would also recommend having a kind of must read list, which should be based on your development needs as a coach. I try to get my interns to write up a competency map as I call it when they come into the programme which is basically a profile of where they are in terms of knowledge and experience coming into the post on a 1-5 scale with 5 being the best coach you can be in that area. I usually talk this through with the individual and then identify areas of development. It works very well You need to get to a baseline in each quality in order to be able to do the job well and this should be addressed first, from there you can choose to go down a specific path to improve your knowledge in that area. Then you can bring up your weak areas when you feel like they need improving. Very often this will be triggered by something that goes on at work, or a conversation with a colleague about programming etc which meakes you think you need to brush up in that area. These are all healthy things to be doing and will improve your competency as a coach no end.
Who’s in your network?
One of the main ways you can keep yourself sharp is to pick up the phone and call up someone else in S&C. Have you ever heard that phrase ‘you are the sum of the 5 people you spend the most time with’, make sure those 5 people challenge you in some way and from an S&C perspective get you to think about your programmes and ideas. Even if you decide to keep everything the same at least you’ve rationalized your programme.
So that completes part 3 and the series as a whole. Had a load of good feedback on this series which makes me think that it was probably worth writing! Again to your success, Brendan
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So you want to be an S&C Coach?? Part 2: The Experience!
Posted by: | CommentsIn the last post in this series I looked at how to get the knowledge base required for the entry level S&C coach. Click here to read it if you missed this post!
This post is all about the key element that every S&C coach needs in abundance, experience.
I guess it’s a bit like money…..Once you have some, you’ll find it easier to get more of it (so I’ve heard)! But getting that initial experience is probably the toughest.
Experience is the key to developing into a great coach. Simply getting your hands on bodies day after day for hours on end will improve your coaching and your confidence in training people no end. It will also highlight the areas of your knowledge that you need to improve on which then should guide your reading and continuing education. There is more to strength and conditioning than standing in the weight room and designing strength programmes. You need to get out on the field and deliver group conditioning sessions, you need to write the programmes, you need to coach plyomterics and movement drills to different sports and learn the intricacies of each sport, and you need to work with hundreds of different bodies in all shapes and sizes. This is only ever going to come with time, effort, commitment and hard work!
There are a couple of mega important character traits that you need in abundance before you start you journey into S&C. The first thing you need to look at is your work ethic! Are you a hard working person willing to go that extra mile to put yourself ahead of others? I say it all the time to the interns that work with me, this job is manual labour!! Stripping bars down, putting them back up, shouting across the room at people to get them to do what you want them to do…..does that sound like you cup of tea? If not, I strongly suggest you look at other avenues for a career as it really is not for shrinking violets!
The second thing to address is attention to detail, do you let things go when times get hard, do you let standards slip? If so it’s going to be a difficult job for you and you’ll struggle to get results. Of course nearly everyone who reads this post will say “Nope that’s not me, I’m super hard working and have a high attention to detail”, but do you really? I see it all the time with interns, some of them are just not able to achieve that standard . If you’ve read any of my articles on developing skills under fatigue you’ll know I talk about TUF, SUF and DUF which is taken from Kelvin Giles work. Technique, Skills and decision-making under fatigue. Well there is also another one that is the catalyst for all three of the ones listed and that is CUF, which stands for Coaching Under Fatigue! Maintaining your standards of coaching at 7pm when you’ve been coaching for 10 hours is hugely important in this role. Of course you need to have that attention to detail when your fresh and then build on the endurance just like you would do strength, power etc….Its all so simple really!!
Okay, so hopefully you haven’t been put off this and are raring to go and get some experience in the industry so lets examine how to get that all important first opportunity.
Unless you’ve been literally burying your head in the sand for the last two years you will have seen the amounts of unpaid internships that have been advertised recently. My advice, go for these opportunities!! They give you great exposure to elite athletes, much more so than if you were getting paid to do a job somewhere else. Who’s going to trust their athletes in the hands of someone with no experience? It doesn’t make sense!
The best places in the UK to look for internships and opportunities in S&C are:
You’ve got to put your ego to one side and accept that you need to start at the bottom of the ladder! This is not dependant on age either, its all about experience. I’ve worked with interns in there late 20′s/early 30′s who’ve changed career and decided to go into strength and conditioning, as well as undergraduates with no life experience whatsoever, and pretty much everything in between! Everyone brings different strengths to the table but the search for that experience is the key!
Even though there are quite a few voluntary opportunities out there, the demand still far outweighs the supply making the job market very competitive. In short, to get that all important first opportunity whether it be internship, observation of sessions, paid work etc, you need to demonstrate to whoever it is that is potentially offering you a role how committed you are to the field before you even get in to the interview situation. I remember sending out emails to coaches asking them questions, going and meeting people off my own back, with nothing guaranteed at the end just to make connections and get some gems of wisdom from people who have been doing it a lot longer then me! Show that committment up front and people will value it. By doing this when that internship comes up with that person or organization, they will know who you are when your CV and cover letter gets through which bumps you up to the top of the list straight away! Then when you get the interview you know what that person is about so you can prepare for it better. When you’re in the interview you know a bit about the environment you’ll be working in and that will serve you well. I’m not saying that it will guarantee you the job, but it’ll probably find more opportunities come your way than if you don’t prepare in this way!
Have patience with this, keep applying along with meeting people and you will get a chance. It might not come straight away but it will come! Take each attempt as an opportunity to reevaluate your gameplan and adjust things if required. Ask for feedback from the organisation if you didn’t get the position, you might need to change the approach you’ve taken, or you might just need to keep trying the same approach, this is your call but have faith in your own game and don’t doubt yourself.
SAY YES TO EVERYTHING!!
Any little bit of experience is worth something to begin with, so seize every opportunity that comes your way and break through the doors rather than waiting for them to open. It is a competitive market place and the ones that get the jobs are the ones with the most experience. When it comes to getting paid work, every one has the qualifications. Your CV will stand out if you have a few years of working in an S&C environment under your belt when you apply for the jobs, along with that all important connection with the person who makes the decisions which comes from your meetings that you’ve arranged for a few years beforehand. To go from finishing your degree or qualification course to getting a full time paid job might be 3,4,5 or more years. Most people will leave and find something else in this time because they don’t have the desire (or the patience) required. Do you have it? You can shorten this journey by saying yes to everything that comes your way. You need to earn the right to turn an opportunity down and you’ll know when this time comes I think. Don’t be in a rush to go from voluntary to paid work either. Internships allow you to make mistakes without being held accountable! This will only happen once during your career most probably! Take advantage of it by learning from these mistakes so you don’t make them in the real world.
I worked as a door superviser when I was trying to get work. I wanted to have my days free both to train and to spend as much time in the gym as I could. I also wanted to be able to do courses in the day and learn as much as I could, and be able to get on a train to go to meet someone whenever the opportunity arose. I did this for a few years through university and a little bit afterwards too. It was hard but well worth it as the experience and knowledge I gained was invaluable.
Most S&C coaches are quite open and happy to help when people ask them questions. It can be hard to arrange meetings, but a word of advice that has served me well is be a pest! I don’t mean on a night out with the opposite sex, I mean with coaches and people that you want to meet!!. Don’t send them one email and when you don’t get a reply accept it and move on…..follow it up with another email, a phone call, visit their gym and put yourself in their life so they cannot ignore you! This is the way to make connections when you’re first starting out, don’t take no for an answer!
When you do eventually get to find a time to meet someone, turn up with a list full of questions you want answering! Don’t turn up and mope about the gym, think of every meeting as a potential job in a few years time! It’s amazing how things come around full circle in this industry and that meeting produces something in the future.
Once you’ve got your internship or that first job in the industry, make sure you hold on to it by being the best trainer you can be! And this will be covered in part 3 of the series. So that’s it for part 2, that’s how to get experience. The next part of the series will look at how to develop into the coach you really want to be once you have that first opportunity.
If you want more info on any of the stuff going on with my programmes, internship opportunities, and some free S&C info including then sign up to my newsletter by leaving your details in the box below, and if you enjoyed this post leave me a comment and don’t forget to share through facebook or twitter!
Now go and get to WORK!!
Brendan
Quick Power Endurance Session
Posted by: | CommentsHere’s a power endurance session with that I used tonight in the combat strength session. It’s a basic but effective session incorporating some plyometrics, strength and power movements.
Give it a go if it fits your training goals or if you need to change things up in your programme.
The athletes enjoyed it, leave a comment if you do too!!
Oh and sign up for my newsletter to get some free stuff and keep up to date with everything thats going on in strength and conditioning!
“Been doing it for 30 years!!”
Posted by: | CommentsIf you work in strength and conditioning and you make some attempt to stay up to date with current trends and research in the industry, chances are you have come across the person who responds to the awkward question with something like the statement above!!
But the question is, is it okay to rely on this type of response to a question regarding the rationale of your programmes, sessions, philosophy or whatever else can be called into question??
For me as always, the answer is it depends. There are certain questions that have pretty damn solid answers that everyone should be expected to know the correct answer and implement in their programmes.
“ How many reps and sets for strength, power endurance etc etc? ”
“ What work to rest ratio for speed/plyometrics? ”
“ Is static stretching appropriate immediately before power training?”
“If I give that girl my best smile will I end up with a smile on my face?”
Okay the last one was a joke (it’s a definite yes )….but the rest are pretty much clear cut these days and should be administered accordingly. However there is a lot of other stuff that actually does not have a solid scientific background that we use everyday, which makes questions in our programmes difficult to answer.
Such as:
“ Why do you put glute activation work into that session?”
“Why would you choose to do contrast or complex training and can you justify the rest interval you are using?
“ Why do you make your athletes take vitamin D?”
The list goes on and on and the answer to these questions will generally be an opinion rather than a fact backed up by hard scientific evidence.
I think that there is a trend in strength and conditioning to come down hard on people who don’t come from a rock solid science based philosophy of programme design and implementation.
My feeling is that as long as you can come up with a rationale for the exercise/supplement/programme design etc etc that you are prescribing as the coach, that is okay! Its okay because we are coaches afterall aren’t we? And its okay to try things out and be creative. We need to ideally be in a position to measure improvements subjectively and objectively if possible as a result of these interventions whether its through performance gains, movement analysis etc, however sometimes you just have to go with your opinion that something works and run with it. I’m certainly not a scientist, I love the science behind training and make an attempt to stay up to date with the research, but in truth it would be detrimental to my programmes to take the pure science approach because I would have to take out some things that I really believe in as a coach…..hell, is there even a solid evidence base for foam rolling?? For sure there is a rationale for it, but can this be backed up with hard evidence? The evidence that most people would use is that their athletes feel a lot better for doing it and it seems to improve movement quality as a result…..I think that’s good enough for me!!
As coaches we need to stay on the cutting edge of the research and use it to guide and inform our practice rather than dictate what we do and don’t prescribe, but don’t forget that its our coaching that gets the results, not the science. Its our coaching that improves people and its our creativity that provides the scientists with things to investigate. The coaches lead the scientists not the other way round and that s the way it always should be!!
Keep training hard, thats all for today!! Oh dont forget to sign up for my newsletter and get your free bundle of S&C stuff, the sign up box is on the right of the page you can’t miss it!!
BC
Quick Hypertrophy Session
Posted by: | CommentsHere is a basic hypertrophy session for the upper body that I have used this last 2 weeks in a 4 day upper/lower body split.
Its a tough but really good session incorporating hypertrophy supersets and time under tension through eccentrics, give it a try!! Don’t forget you need to earn the right to lift weights by mastering your bodyweight first, read this post for more info
Oh and don’t forget to sign up to my email list so you can download a load of free sttength and conditioning info including plyometric guidelines, a warm-up model and much more!!
Earn the right to load up!
Posted by: | CommentsThis is a session from my high performance badminton general prep programme and is part of a 3 day, total body development programme.
The goal of this session is to build work capacity in these players following a break from a tough competitive season. However the reason I put this in is to demonstrate the emphasis that I put on bodyweight movements such as push-ups in the programme. In this session which is done on mondays it is in the first superset of the day paired up with front squats. I’m a big believer in building body weight competency before loading people up with weight hence a great emphasis on push-ups in this opening phase. Its amazing how many people struggle with the most fundamental of movements including the stronger guys in the group I might add! Although you could say that badminton players don’t need large amounts of upper body strength its my belief that athletes at minimum need to be able to complete some good push-ups with excellent form! Putting in a few different variations in this way keeps it a little more varied, and provides a break in the set to allow for recovery. The athletes need to complete 6 reps before they have a break. They don’t need to complete all 18 reps straight but of course that is the goal of the phase and actually most of the group are pretty close to that after 3 sessions combined with all the other movements in the programme to back this up.
As Kevin Giles says you need to ‘Earn the right’ to progress! So get good at push-ups before you even think about bench pressing. I like my guys to be able to do 3 sets of 12 reps with perfect form before they move to dumbells or bench presses.
What do you think? Are you thinking about progression in this way with your athletes? If not I think you are missing one of the key concepts of the athletic development process!
Don’t forget you can sign up to my newsletter by entering your email in the sign up box, you will then be able to download a load of free stuff including my recovery guide that I give to all the athletes I train.
Good luck with your training and coaching people!
BC
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