Archive for Heart Rate
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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You have the power…….
Posted by: | CommentsFirstly hope your liking the new website, its getting there week by week!
Here is a quick and easy way to compare strength levels between individuals of different body weights….it’s commonly referred to as the 2/3’s power rule and is an improvement on the more commonly used methods out there.
I first came across this reading through some of Dan Bakers work, all of which I would highly recommend (www.danbakerstrength.com), and more recently work on monitoring by Dr Greg Haff from the US brought it back to my attention.
Generally speaking aside from the obvious absolute strength comparison (eg you lifted 120, I lifted 100 therefore you are stronger), the only other widely used comparison is the relative strength values which is calculated by weight lifted/bodyweight, eg 200kg/100kg = 2 vs 150kg/70kg = 2.14. In this case the lighter individual would be classed as relatively stronger than the heavier individual as they can lift more weight per kilogram bodyweight. But this is obviously the case, lighter people will always be stronger relative to their bodyweight. But is this actually the case, are they actually stronger? We know that the capacity for producing force exponentially decreases with additional bodymass. The world record clean and jerk in the 105kg class is 263kg, this equates to an impressive 2.5x bodyweight. But when compared to the 56kg class record which is 168kg you can see that the lighter man has the better relative strength, over 3x bodyweight! In my gym when we do max testing the lighter guys always win the contest when you look at the results from a relative point of view even though the heavier guys always lift more weight. But who do the bragging rights really belong to? Well hopefully this method will help to settle the argument once and for all!
The 2/3’s power formula is a handy method for comparing the two lifters to decide who is actually the stronger.
Here’s an example: In the first instance the lighter individual is relatively stronger than the heavier individual with a 2.14x bodyweight lift versus a 2x bodyweight lift.
But we know that lighter individuals are always going to be relatively stronger than heavier individuals, so using the 2/3rd’s power formula we can determine who is actually the strongest.
Firstly the formula is as follows:
Now don’t get concerned about the maths element to this, you really don’t need to have a maths degree to figure it out, all you need is a calculator with a power to button which all scientific calculators have!!
Using the example above the figures are inserted into the formula (I have started with the heavier individual first):
This gives us the value of 9.14 which is the multiplier for the comparison between the lifts.
Using this multiplier we can see that the formula for the 70kg individual:
So the value that the 70kg individual needs to lift is unknown, but the formula can be rearranged very simply to calculate this figure:
The value comes to 157kg, So in actual fact in the example shown, the heavier individual is the strongest, as the lighter individual would need to lift 7kg extra to be equally as strong.
For maximal strength lifts this is the way you would compare lifts with more accuracy than the relative strength comparison. This formula is also really handy for S&C coaches when comparing workloads during training blocks both between the same individual and between athletes of different bodyweights. You just insert the number of reps and sets into the formula and work it out the same way.
You can compare men with women as well with this formula but it may be slanted slightly due to gender differences.
Don’t be put of buy the maths, its like an S&C version of brain training to keep you younger for longer whilst at the same time improving your programmes!
Thats all for now, my brain is fried from all this…….keep training hard guys and let me know if you found this useful.
BC
A few tweaks…..
Posted by: | CommentsHi Readers,
As you can see my website has a new layout and has been tweaked slightly over the last few months. I’m hoping this will make it easier to bring you more quality content which is my goal for the next few months! I know that some of the links etc are still not fully functional which is a bit of a nightmare but it will be all live very soon! My intention is to keep writing quality blog posts and putting out cutting edge strength and conditioning information for you guys to improve your coaching and your athletes.
I am writing this post from my sofa with ice on my ankle after a tough Judo session last night. Judo is an extremely tough martial art. I read an interesting tweet by Dave Camarillo ( a judo and BJJ black belt) who said that the journey to Jiu Jitsu black belt is a much longer one than Judo, but the path to a Judo blackbelt is more mentally and physically demanding. I love both these arts so watch this space over the next few years and ill let you know how it goes! I have been doing BJJ for nearly 10 years and i’m a purple belt so the journey is certainly a long one, but every step so far has been enjoyable and that is the most important thing!
Another BJJ and judo practitioner is my friend and MMA athlete Danny Mitchell. Since January he has gone from being 98kg down to 75.8kg on the weigh-in for his world title fight on May 7th. The principles used for this weight cut are taken from my studying nutrition along with years spent working with Danny on this side of his programme combined with his considerable knowledge. We are putting this into an ebook which will be a solid educational and practical guide that I would highly recommend to any combat athlete. Send me an email if you want to be on the mailing list for this product in the next few months or so, I guarantee it will change your training and nutrition outlook!
Anyway thats all for now, watch out for a few extras added to the site in coming weeks guys and keep training hard!
Brendan
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