Entries by darren.drake

Why the key to getting faster is to step back first

When you go to a workshop, I bet you have been told that if you want to be fast you need to make sure you don’t step back first.  I read this on an American Baseball website recently: ”Standing up on the first step before accelerating is a common mistake that players make when breaking from […]

3 Topics every S&C coach should have an opinion on!

This blog post is inspired by a really interesting Discussion Forum that recently took place at one of my visits to the National Strength & Conditioning Workshop, at the Lawn Tennis Association.  One of the perks of being the Head of S&C at Gosling Tennis Academy is getting the chance to go to these workshops […]

Current Job Opportunities with APA

  ATHLETIC PERFORMANCE ACADEMY IN ASSOCIATION WITH GOSLING TENNIS ACADEMY WANT TO WORK WITH THE BEST? In September 2009 Gosling Tennis Academy became an International High Performance Centre (IHPC) as awarded by the Lawn Tennis Association.  Gosling Tennis Academy is one of only four academies in the country to be given this award based on […]

Periodisation for Tennis- Part 3

Well we finally get to the last blog of the series on Periodisation- this one is about the actual exercises I think are appropriate for Tennis, from a more specific stand point.  If you haven’t read the previous blogs I suggest you do otherwise some of the terms I describe here might not make sense. […]

Enhancing Tennis Performance with technical running drills

To follow up the last post I thought I would give some key take home messages from the second presentation at the Lawn Tennis Association HPC S&C Workshop.  As part of my role as Head of S&C at Gosling Tennis Academy I get to go down to the National Tennis Centre (NTC) three times a […]

Periodisation for Tennis- Part 2

This post is a follow up to my previous post on Periodisation- Part 1 which you can see here.   In this post I would like to share with you some of my recent thoughts on the topic of Transfer of Training.  The holy grail of strength & conditioning in my view, is taking an […]

Periodisation for Tennis- Part 1

Over the last couple of days I’ve found some really cool online resources that I have found really useful and thought provoking.  Most of my reading has been directed to the topic of Periodisation so I thought it would be interesting to share this in a Blog!  In Part 1 I am going to discuss […]

S&C Education Conference 2014 Kelvin Giles on the Overhead Athlete

This weekend saw the launch of the first Online S&C Education Conference (by webinar), hosted by my friend and colleague, Brendan Chaplin.  Unfortunately I didn’t manage to get to hear all 12 speakers this week due to work commitments but I wasn’t going to miss any of the presentations over the weekend!  Given that a […]

Gaining Positive Outcomes through Negative Consequences

I’m pleased to be able to bring you the latest APA Blog with another instalment from Fabrizio Gargiulo, on ‘pressure training.’  This is part of a series of articles where we are looking at the relationship between cognitive factors and physiological performance- see the first article here.   As part of our quest to develop […]