Entries by dazdrake

6 Myths of Strength Training for Women

This article was originally taken from the Gosling Sports Park website. Francesa Xuereb has been working as part of the APA Team since the summer and has written an excellent article on Strength training for women. Over the past few years, women have been moving away from the cardio part of the gym and taking […]

Can everyone get in peak physical condition or is it all in your genes?

For almost 15 years I have had the privilege to train professional and aspiring professional athletes.  One might call this high performance physical preparation coaching- and we like to call ourselves strength & conditioning coaches. Having briefly flirted with the role of Personal Trainer in my early days after University I’ve recently started coaching adult […]

What we learnt from the pre-season in 2015

Hi All, firstly a very belated Happy New Year! I have had a week to readjust to the normal S&C schedule back at Gosling Tennis Academy where APA do most of their magic so thought I would give some feedback on the recent Professional Players Pre-season Pre-season: 7th December 2015- 3rd January 2016. In case […]

The Coach Athlete Relationship- Interview with Daz Drake

A few weeks ago I was asked to be interviewed by one of the students who is doing work experience with APA, as part of one of his assignments for University. I thought it might make an interesting blog post- I’ll leave you to be the judge of that!! Coach- Athlete Relationship Interview – Daz […]

Monitoring fatigue in athletes

Testing for Testing sake? Regular readers might remember that I was going to make more use of the Gym aware this training phase- GymAware is a small, portable, and accurate linear encoder which attaches to free weights bars and weight stack machines for measuring power output.  I did away with the standing vertical jump and have […]

APA launch Group Fitness for Adults

This week I am as excited as I ever have been.  As you know, at APA we believe that one of the fastest ways to improve your game and win more is to get fit. APA specialise in getting you fitter, faster and stronger so you can excel in sport or lead a healthy functional life. […]

Lessons we can learn from Sir Alex Ferguson

Two days ago I had the privilege to present to over 20 Performance Tennis coaches from Hertfordshire as part of the relaunch of the Herts Coaches Association. Who cares how strong you get them! I am in a fairly unique place having worked and specialised in performance Tennis for 12 years.  Having been on the […]