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Lessons we can learn from Sir Alex Ferguson

October 17, 2015/in APA Blog /by dazdrake

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 shoulder of some fantastic tennis coaches over the years I have a unique perspective which means I can relate all of the S&C work I do to the game. I think that is a massive part of an effective coaches’ tool kit- the ability to turn/TRANSFER kinetic gains in the gym (increased force/power etc) into kinematic gains on the sports field (improved set up and torque during skill execution).

The figure above highlights how movement efficiency in the gym in the form of a squat (fundamental movement skill) sets up longer term success in fundamental sports skills such as the set up stance when preparing to hit a ground stroke.

You can read more about this presentation in my previous blog Movement skills before Sport Skills, where I discussed LTAD, the Technical checklist and the processes involved in influencing movement efficiency.

In this blog I want to go into a bit more detail on the Mental processes that influence movement efficiency, or more generally the overall performance of an athlete or team.

From a Mental Performance factor stand point the ultimate goal is to get your athlete or team into a state of mind where they can FOCUS on the task at hand and give their 100% best effort. My inspiration for this blog came from watching a documentary/interview with Sir Alex Ferguson, who is regarded as perhaps one of the very best in the world at getting the best out of his players over his entire managerial career.

Knowing your players

When interviewed Sir Alex was asked whether he thought he coached through Fear or Love? He said that he thought it was a bit of both; you needed to know when to give someone a bit of love and an arm around the shoulder and when to give someone a bit of dressing down to get the best out of them.

Sir Alex was well known for his ‘hair drier’ treatment of certain players including Roy Keane, Ryan Giggs and even David Beckham. He wanted to let everyone know that no one was too big to get put in their place. Everyone except Eric Cantona, who Sir Alex knew was someone that no matter how reckless or poor his performances or behaviour was he would never respond to the stick. He always needed Love.

Christian Ronaldo spoke very highly of Sir Alex and spoke of how considerate of his situation he was when his Father was unwell; he said to Christian, take how ever long you want- one day, two days, a week- your family is the most important thing. We love you here at the club, you’re very important to us but family comes first.

We need to recognise that the athlete or team needs to be in the right state of mind to receive the coaching you want to give them. The Figure below shows the number of factors that can influence someone’s focus. Clearly Sir Alex had a great knowledge of his player’s and knew what things were going on in their life that could potentially have an influence on their performance. He clearly knew when to be positive but also when to really challenge someone with some tough words to get a response.

Internal factors

This is the mental ‘stuff’ that an athlete or team will bring to the session that can influence their focus.

External factors

This is the mental ‘stuff’ that we as coaches also need to bring to the session that can influence both our own and our athlete or team’s focus.

Resulting Mindset

The combination of the internal and external factors give us the resultant mindset which is part of the Environment you create as a coach.

Peak Performance Coaching

Your job as a coach is to get your athletes to focus and give 100% effort and in my opinion there are 3 aspects to coaching for achieving this that all top coaches have in abundance linked to their COMMUNICATION:

Create the environment
Set the Scene
Ask for Feedback

Create the environment- it starts with respect!

Sir Alex said that it isn’t about coaching through either Fear or Love, it’s about having RESPECT. He also said it wasn’t about power it was about control. He wanted to make sure that he was in control of everyone and everything. But that’s for another blog about Leadership. Let’s talk a bit more about how someone like Sir Alex might influence his players during actual coaching sessions.

Overall there is a need for the individual or team to respect you. If they don’t respect you they won’t listen to you and they certainly won’t want to work for you. We all know you have to earn respect you can’t demand it. Having said that some people who have been there and done it will get instant respect such as former pros who turn managers or managers joining new clubs fresh from success with a previous club.

I personally think you earn respect in many ways.

Respect through your track record

I think people respect you when they can see that your methods get results- that helps.

Respect through being consistent

From my approach I try and earn respect because my athletes see I stand up for what I believe in and set clear rules for behaviour that I work hard to uphold. Maybe they don’t always like the strict approach but they learn to respect it because it creates an environment conducive to learning and not horse play. I personally start off with a fairly strict no nonsense approach but there is certainly plenty of room for fun too! However, if athletes break the rules then there are consequences for that.

Respect through trust

When you show someone that you are prepared to go above and beyond to support someone to achieve their goals it builds trust in you that you are there for them. Having an unconditional love for your athletes is really important. It is important to be able to always see the greatness in everyone. If you can’t do that then you aren’t the right person to be working with them. Having a positive label of the athlete is important- don’t label them as lazy, or having a poor attitude, you always need to focus on what they do well and where they are making progress. It’s about being positive.

”No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care”

Before the session starts

In my opinion one of the most important roles of a coach is to pay attention to your own as well as your athlete or team’s mindset going in to the session and bring them up or down to the right level to get them in their ‘optimal mindset.’

Assuming the athletes respect you they may still need a bit of help to get in the right mindset; that’s why coaches need to be in state of mind where they are neither under or over aroused.

Having a presence – grab their attention!

There is no doubt that certain coaches seem to have more of a presence than others. One of the delegates at my presentation apparently remarked to another coach, ‘I thought he was shy?’ after seeing me present!

You see, in my every day life I’m quiet and I am not usually the one who is at the centre of attention or looking to get in the thick of the action. I prefer to be in the background and my leadership style is very mild mannered and consultative.

Yet in my coaching role, I see it like more than an audition; it’s a performance and people are coming to be entertained. In my presentation I had to keep more than 20 coaches entertained for nearly 3 hours! No easy task!

If you have a great presence you can use that to influence the energy of the athlete or group positively. If they are lacking in energy you can rally the troops with your enthusiasm. If they are over aroused, angry anxious and so on, you can calm them down with a controlled but authoritative voice. Both types of communication require a strong presence.

Be Passionate for the subject you are talking about

The easiest way to grab attention is to have lots of passion and enthusiasm for what you are talking about.

Use shake up activities

People are much more likely to be engaged when they are involved. Before you get stuck into your coaching session if you can see the energy in the group looks low a really easy tactic is to use a high energy game such as tag or any kind of game which has a ball- anything that requires them to compete and concentrate!!

Let them calm down first

Equally if you are about to give them some coaching and they come to you too hyped up or angry, let them calm down first- where you can either call a time out for the entire squad or an individual so they can calm down first.

Setting the Scene

This is a huge part of every coaching session. Now that the athletes are ready to listen with the right mindset you can now set the scene for the rest of the session.

The figure above summarises some of the things I spoke to the Herts Coaches about. Too often we get straight into the drill we want to work on without setting the scene properly. Tell them what they are going to do and then why- which can be done through you selling the importance of it (if it’s a new drill) or asking them why it is important and reinforcing that (motivating them).

Crucially you will want to remind them of what you are expecting from them. You may want use demonstrations to show what you are looking for from a performance point of view. You most definitely want to remind them that you are looking for 100% effort and focus.

Let the drill teach the skill

One of the the things I have learnt is that the easiest way to get people to work hard is to set the level of challenge high enough that the only way someone can achieve the goal is if they are focused.

Athletes will always respond well to drills that are:

Fun
Competitive
Challenging

Generally speaking games based drills are more fun so rather than just doing closed technical drills, more open drills that involve running and use of a variety of skills are more fun. Athletes always enjoy opportunities to apply their skills.

Keep score to hold interest and promote competition and most importantly stretch your athletes by making them aware of world class levels of performance. I think it’s always easier to challenge them by setting the level high and see if they can reach it. To do this you as a performance coach need to have an awareness of standards and know what world class looks like!

Too often we might berate athletes for not working hard enough but if we don’t stretch them in the first place they may not have a reason to need to work hard!

Give them a choice

When you set the scene you can also:

a) give them a choice how hard they want to be challenged- they can decide how challenging they want the drills to be

b) give them a choice if they want to stop or keep going (when the drill is challenging)- but they must know that IF they decide to KEEP GOING they will need to meet the demands of the drill.

Ask for Feedback

You can learn a lot about what is going on in the head of an athlete by asking questions after completion of a drill. They can tell you what they were focusing on and they can even come up with ideas on what they think they need to do to improve their performance.

In my experience, if you give the athlete ownership of their performance they will often harder on the things they have come up with even if you think there is something else that may be more important! Sometimes it’s more effective to let them run with their own idea and see what happens!

By doing this you are also showing the athlete you are making them accountable to an agreed level when we set the scene earlier. It is very important to get agreement on the level of performance actually achieved. If it is not of a high enough level they have a choice- either improve to the level required or be asked to stop the session.

There is no place for mediocrity!

I hope you have enjoyed this blog.

If you would be interested in learning more about some of the skills and drills that form part of APA’s movement skills foundation to build high levels of coordination and strength in athletes who aspire to become a professional sportsman or woman then please book on to APA’s next workshop:

Title: Coordination and Strength Training for Sports

Date: October 31st 9am-12pm

Venue: Gosling Sports Park

Cost: £30

Full Details HERE

Why movement skills must come before sports skills

October 11, 2015/in APA Blog /by dazdrake

It’s that time of year again where I’m doing more speaking engagements. This month I will be presenting at:

October 2015

Herts Lawn Tennis Association: ‘The Role of S&C in Stroke Development’ 15th October 2015
University of Hertfordshire ‘Foundations of Sports Coaching’ 27th October 2015
University of Hertfordshire ‘Advanced Sports Coaching’ 30th October 2015
APA Workshop Gosling Sports Park ‘Coordination and Strength Training for Sports.’ 31st October 2015

Key Themes

Coaching Process:

Across all four presentations I will be focusing on some key principles of the Coaching Process. This is based on:

Creating a Culture
Creating an Environment
Communicating Effectively

The coaching process exists to provide a framework for ensuring successful performance.

Training Process:

In the sessions for Herts LTA and also in the APA workshop I will be focusing more closely how to ensure that physical gains made in the gym transfer into performance. To understand how to do this you need to know the ingredients that determine optimal performance. Before I continue I would encourage you to read a blog article of Keir Wenham-Flatt aka the rugby strength coach- click HERE , on training specificity. He makes some really good points on why at times the training we do in the gym can be very general in nature, as this is the best way to maximise the capacities of certain biomotor abilities. At other times it is important to train very specifically to enable you to apply your fitness under game conditions.

But seeing as many of my presentations will specifically address the needs of sports coaches I will be focusing on the cross-over between S&C and sports coaches when improving sport specific skills.

Anyone who has done coaching at any level will likely have been taught about the four performance factors:

Mental
Physical
Tactical
Technical

In my presentations I focus on the Mental and Physical factors and then go into detail on how the S&C can work in unison with the Technical requirements of the sports skill action to optimise performance.

Physical Factors: Long-term Athlete Development

No presentation on S&C would be complete without some reference to Long-term Athletic Development (LTAD). Below is a graph which I have found very useful over the years.

Get ready for the Demands of the Sport

I like to start with this slide in a lot of my presentations as it gives a context for the rest of the presentation. I make the point that yes, those young children who start the sport sooner and do more at a young age will be more successful at a young age. This is because Playing Age accounts for a lot of the success of a young athlete.

But over the course of the athlete’s career it is the Level of fitness (specifically speed and their coordination) that affects tennis performance to a much greater extent. Yet so many parents and coaches interpret this the wrong way. They think that because it takes on increasing importance over time you don’t need to address it until much later down the track. In fact the opposite is true, you need to invest in your fitness from a young age so that when you get to the higher levels you have the physical capacities to meet the ever increasing demands of the sport.

You can’t cram for the test! You only have to look at how much Andy Murray needed to invest in his fitness when he made the transition onto the ATP Tour and initially struggled in best of five Grand slam tournaments. Most players are not as well equipped to make the adjustments once they get to the Tour.

10,000 hours

You can’t go very far before hearing someone mention the 10,000 hours debate so I’m going to offer my thoughts on it below. I agree that deliberate practice is key. I also agree that anyone who has become an expert in anything has amassed some significant hours of practice.

So how would you go about planning this training?

For me the important question is to ask by what point would you have needed to have amassed your 10,000 hours? By the age of 10, 15, 20 and so on? Do you need to get there as soon as possible and will it vary amongst sports and individuals?

According to the new guidelines of the LTA, children are now encouraged to play Tennis more than previously advised. They are also advised to play less sport than previously advised (see the New guidelines above). Under the new guidelines, if children practice in the upper limit (which they often do!) this could mean that children starting at 5 years old will have done over 10,000 hours by the time they are 14. Do children really need to do that many hours by such a young age?

I am less inclined to focus on doing large number of hours in one sport in the the early years when the focus is on Teaching. In my opinion the important thing is to make sure that the child spends ENOUGH TIME to master the basic skills of the sport- but not too much that they specialise in it at the exclusion of others.

Don’t get stuck in the numbers. It’s an average NOT a rule. I can be talented and make it on 5,000 hours

Could it be possible that some children with more ‘talent’ could reach the levels of technical mastery in one sport in say 5,000 hours? In my opinion, yes! Therefore I’d be more keen to emphasis playing less tennis than the high upper ranges for children aged 5-10 years, and be in favour of playing other sports. If they really need that many hours to get the basic skills are they actually any good, and even if they persevere are they likely to still be in the game at an older age with the risks of burn out?

What I would be more in favour of emphasising is accumulating the hours in the form of Training through adolescence once the young athlete decides to focus on one sport. The image above shows that players (at least in the sport of Tennis, which is my main sport I work in) are not reaching the highest level of the game until their mid twenties. Therefore the best time to accumulate many hours of deliberate practice in one sport is in your teens. And the extra time you have in your early years can be spent on playing other sports and most importantly, building your athletic skills.

The Technical Check list

Movement efficiency is the name of the game….in the gym this is easy to measure: the ability to perform movements such as a squat through a full range of motion under control. As you can see below, at APA we focus on a holistic athletic programme which includes development of the 5 S’s (suppleness, skill, speed, strength and and stamina).

We define skill as those athletic qualities that enable you to move most efficiently so your muscles can function the way they are supposed to. We break skills down into:

Balance
Coordination
Reaction speed

This is in my opinion where the ‘movement skills’ training really pays off. If we can improve a child’s general athletic SKILLS (or movement skills) they will be much better able to acquire the complex sports skills.

So what does movement efficiency look like for the sports coach? What movements do they want us to help them develop in their tennis player? In the sport of Tennis all the work we do to make them more athletic ultimately needs to help them ‘get set up’ correctly- which means getting their feet set up in the right place at the right time to hit the ball while being balanced and using the body properly!!!!!

In my talk with the Tennis coaches next week I will go in to detail on the methods I use to develop specific physical attributes of ‘Skill’ that will create a MOVEMENT FOUNDATION on which to BUILD TECHNICAL SKILLS. As you can see above, you can only hit an effective ball using the correct path, angle and speed (PAS) of the racket, IF and only IF you are set up correctly and use the correct bodywork.

I will share with the Tennis coaches the Observation check list which needs to be respected before the coaches look to try and coach technique to address errors. It may be that there was indeed a technical error BUT if may have started much sooner in the process- and often their are physical deficiencies which are holding players back from executing their skills.

Once the S&C coach can grasp the basic demands of the techniques of the sports skill they will be much more equipped to select specific types of balance, coordination, reaction speed, and even strength and power and stamina activities to ensure a quick transfer to the sport skill.

Title: Coordination and Strength Training for Sports

Date: October 31st 9am-12pm

Venue: Gosling Sports Park

Cost: £30

Full Details HERE

Monitoring Training Load and Fatigue

October 3, 2015/in APA Blog /by dazdrake

September madness

If your job is anything like mine then the month of September is all hands on deck as many of our junior athletes are returning from summer holidays, are back to school and are now getting back to their student athlete lifestyles.

Needless to say we have had a lot of athletes to assess over the last few weeks including physical competency assessments, fitness tests and strength/power profiles. With all this data it is important to be able to determine what data is actually useful so that is my focus this year.

Athlete monitoring: Goal 1: Is it any good?

APA has been recording data consistently over the last four years on a range of Fitness test parameters so we know what good looks like in terms of speed, agility, power and stamina. Since APA purchased the Gym Aware linear position transducer to determine power and force parameters I have been keen to use this tool to deepen my understanding of what good looks like!

Based on previous articles and my take away messages from the UKSCA conference this summer my main goal is to determine:

if there is a power achieved at a specific load that differentiates those at pro level from the second string players in the sports I work in.

Tennis: Since I spend most of my own time working in Tennis I thought I would start with that. There are many contributing factors to successful performance in Tennis besides physical attributes. So unlike other sports it may not always be the case that the best athlete is also the best tennis player.

Other sports such as rugby may be better off assessing absolute power at fixed loads of 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100kg.

For example, Dan Baker’s research on professional rugby league players, with whom he worked for 19 years, shows that the power achieved jumping with 80-100 kg really differentiates those at the pro team level (NRL) from second- and third-division players.

But for Tennis I am going to look at relative power first rather than absolute power. So this years’s power profile looks at 0, 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100% bodyweight. I will be investigating if better players produce more power at certain loads.

So far I have profiled our top 3 British Tennis players (all Top 300 world ranked) and their power and force profiles during 1 repetition jump squats look like this:

Athlete 1 was able to generate 78 watts/kg during 20% of his body mass during a jump squat. It doesn’t seem to follow the trend of his profile but for now 78 watts/kg is the highest observed. He is the best athlete (supported by this jump squat profile) and currently is also the highest ranked.

Athlete monitoring: Goal 2: Is it any good- measured against the norm?

It is clearly important to know what good looks like. It is equally important to know how the performance you are observing compares to the ‘norm.’ Is the change in performance significant or simply within the realms of typical day to day variation?

One of the skills of a strength & conditioning coach is being able to plan the training of a professional athlete who is training multiple times per day across both S&C and their sport. Below are a selection of training templates I have either personally used myself or have seen other coaches use.

Clearly the stresses of such a full schedule can take its toll on the body (and performance) of the athlete, so it’s important to monitor this. Perhaps the athlete is not responding well to the volume and/or intensity of the schedule. How can you observe this? And then hopefully do something about it before it becomes an issue?

I have already mentioned in a previous blog about this but it is worth referring again to some of Dan Baker’s work he used to monitor neuromuscular fatigue. He used a 20kg repeated jump squat x 5 to monitor mean external power.

Dan says, ”At the end of every power training session warm-up, before the real barbell work started, we would do five jump squats with 20 kg to monitor the state of the neuromuscular system/recovery. An easy test, not fatiguing, and it allowed us to monitor how the squad was coping. A 3-4% deviation (from the best pre-season score) meant nothing. That is just the normal weekly variation, but changes of 7-10+% meant something! If the whole squad is down on average 7%, look out!”

Figure 5. Monitoring neuro-muscular recovery through the weekly assessment of jump squat power with 20 kg in professional rugby league players. The mid-season slump corresponds with two key factors—mid-winter and an increase in playing load and intensity for the key players.

Statistics, Statistics, Statistics!!!

Means, Standard Deviations and Z scores

Mean– The mean is the average of the numbers: a calculated “central” value of a set of numbers.

Standard deviation– A measure of the dispersion of a set of data from its mean. The more spread apart the data, the higher the deviation. Standard deviation is calculated as the square root of variance.

Z–Score – A Z-Score is a statistical measurement of a score’s relationship to the mean in a group of scores. A Z–score of 0 means the score is the same as the mean. A Z–score can also be positive or negative, indicating whether it is above or below the mean and by how many standard deviations.

This year I will be calculating these numbers for our important variables that we believe will be the most sensitive to change during times of fatigue. So I will be taking the Reactive Strength Index (RSI) at the end of warm-ups at 9:45am and then the Mean External Power of a repeated 20kg jump squat during the start of the strength session at 10:30am.

Below is some hypothetical data for Mean External Power for this month

Let’s say the coach asks me if the score on 21.10.15 is significant. As you can see there is an upwards trend in RSI performance peaking at 2.70 on 21.10.15

The Rolling average is 2.58 which takes into account the average of the last four scores

The Z Score of 1.31 shows that the last score of 2.70 is above the mean. Z scores are particularly important when determining significance- when the score has gone above/below the rolling average.

Generally a score of between +/-1 and +/-2 is seen as quite a significant change from the average. (A Yellow Flag).

Generally a score of greater than +/- 2 is seen as very significant.

Therefore the last score would be quite significant in terms of a worthwhile improvement from the rolling average.

How can APA help you?

Fitness testing and programme design

General public remote support packages-athlete copy

If you would like APA to assess your fitness and write you a programme you can do yourself then feel free to contact us. We would love to hear from you.

5 Numbers to Live by- Free workshop

September 5, 2015/in APA Blog /by dazdrake

In previous weeks I have posted on why an athlete should employ an S&C coach (Click Here) and another one on how much should junior athletes should train (Click Here). This blog is a follow up to the first two- it’s a bit of a sneak peak to APA’s next workshop. We always kick off the school term with our FREE workshop, entitled 5 Numbers to Live by.

Gosling Tennis Academy, 12th September 2015 9AM- 12PM

Workshop cost £FREE, 3 license points for LTA Tennis Coaches

About the workshop:

Athletic Performance Academy (APA) Director Daz Drake will be delivering a workshop called, ‘5 Numbers to live by.’ This workshop will bring together the presenter’s extensive experience and background in the field of youth coaching to give the participant a thorough overview of the key ingredients of a safe and effective strength & conditioning programme.

The content will include but is not limited to the following areas:

The three goals of strength & conditioning training
The six stages of Long-term athlete development (LTAD)
The theory and application of the 10,000 hour rule
The 5 S’s of physical performance
The optimal number of hours of S&C per week

This half day workshop will be split into two parts and will include theory and practical sessions.

About the presenters:

Daz Drake is currently Head of Strength and Conditioning at Gosling Tennis Academy and is Director of Athletic Performance Academy who consult with numerous sports organisations in the south of England. Daz currently looks after the S&C programmes of some of the top ranked male professional Tennis players in the country.

Registration for the event is online. All details for the event will be sent out to you after registering.

p.s on the last point on the optimal number of hours of S&C I would like to shout out to my colleague Howard Green who wrote an article on the rationale for why his Tennis athletes will be doing a Training block this September. Check it out HERE.

He also put a journal article out there with our colleague Jonny Fraser. Nice work all!

UKSCA Conference 2015- The cliff notes

August 14, 2015/in APA Blog /by dazdrake

Hi All,

like many of us busy coaches this time of year represents a time for reflection over the summer before we get back to it in September. This year I had the opportunity to go to all three days of the UKSCA conference!! As usual I like to get some take home points out there through my blog so here it is!

If you’re a Strength & Conditioning coach then this is the must go to event. I have only missed one since the inaugural conference in 2004!! As ever there was an extensive line-up of International speakers with representation from UK, Australia and USA. There was also a record turn out of over 500 delegates over the 3 day programme. So I thought it would be appropriate to feedback a few of the key messages and applied methodologies presented at the workshops I attended or made notes on. Here were my top 3 presentations!

Dr Avery Faigenbaum

Professor in the Department of Health and Exercise Science (College of New Jersey)

Youth resistance Training: past practices, new perspectives and future directions

We’re making big mistakes! What we’re doing now to tackle the obesity situation isn’t working!
According to World Health Organisation only 20% of children globally are achieving target of 60 minutes of physical activity per day
If you start high school overweight there is an 80% chance you’ll leave high school overweight- obesity sticks. It’s a myth you grow out of it!
‘Weakness kittens’- many problems can be traced back to a lack of Strength
Due to lack of activity in ‘play’ situations in modern day there is a need for a preparatory strength and motor skills programme to prepare kids for the demands of sport.
Fun is a balance between skill and challenge- take the fun out of a programme, you take the kids out of the programme
How strong is strong enough? Parallel squat 0.7 x BM (11-12yrs), 1.5 x BM (13-15yrs) and 2.0 x BM (16-19 yrs)

Dr Duncan French

Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation (Northumbria University)

Programming to meet demands of the sport

Don’t always be focused on maximising power- rather focus on peak power across the loads more relevant to your sport
Training Environment is about development not about expression (Structural development ie., Physiological overload and Coordination development ie., motor skill overload)
Key focus of training is ‘Greater stability in key positions’
Cat always land on their feet because there are key reference points it always finds.

What are the key positions that define optimal movement (low variability in elite performers)

Sport is a chaotic environment and you can’t simply train for all the variations of movement like the cricket catch above. However, the reference points that define quality movement are generic.

Dr Graeme Close

Reader in Applied Physiology and Sports Nutrition (Liverpool John Moores University)

Translating lab based nutrtional science to performance: from test tube to Twickenham

Bodyfat analysis should be confirmatory NOT diagnostic!
Assess don’t guess. There is massive Individual variation in both resting metabolic rate and energy expenditure
Rugby players don’t consume as many calories as you might think, 3500 per day.
Macronutrient intake is periodised: based off a basic plan of 3/2/1 g.kg-1 carb/protein/fat but will increase carbs days before Game Day.
Don’t be focused on a fat optimised diet- all the carb phobia out there is unjustified.
Do the basics well first (total caloried, timing, type, sleep, hydration).

From student to Head of S&C in 3 years!

August 7, 2015/in APA Blog /by dazdrake

August is upon us already! That means one thing- it’s conference season! Like many of you out there, I have just got back from the 2015 UKSCA S&C Conference. Having made all but one since they started in 2005 I can honestly say this was one of my favourites. I was there for all three days including the pre-conference seminars on Youth Training.

I will follow up with a full review in next week’s blog. But this year August also represented a landmark for one of my part-time S&C coaches, Patrick Waplington.

Paddy Waplington

I’ll leave Paddy to explain his coaching journey in detail below, but in short Paddy has been with APA for three years and has just left us to take up his new role as Head of S&C at Challenge Tennis, Chesham which started on August 1st 2015. I can’t tell you how much of a kick I get out of seeing someone achieve their goals. It’s rewarding for me to see people come through our coaching system and Paddy will be sorely missed. However, he is proof that if you work hard you can achieve something. Hear his story below!

Coaching Journey with APA

My coaching journey with APA started in 2011. I was studying at the University of Hertfordshire and personal training in my local gym and of course…I already knew it all. After shadowing the S&C team at Gosling for a uni coaching assignment I soon realised I knew absolutely nothing!

I was comfortable in a gym environment working with average Joe’s, all of a sudden I was in an International High Performance Centre watching athletes on court busting their ass to be elite level tennis players. My first session was shadowing APA Coach Martin Skinner. He was noticing things I hadn’t even thought of and effortlessly coaching his athlete, making him faster right in front of me. I was hooked!!

I continued to shadow Martin for further uni assignments before I met Daz Drake, Managing Director of APA. I attended a workshop he was running which was another eye opener for me. By this time I had attended a number of UKSCA workshops and had been developing my own S&C knowledge. The great thing about his workshop was that Daz would take a drill I already knew, show me how to implement it into a sport specific scenario, then show me how to get an athlete to want to do that drill. Impressive stuff!!

Soon after I graduated, a job opportunity arose with APA, I went for it, I got it.

Initially this was a 10 hour per week contract and I worked hard to do the best job I could. Within 6 months I was coaching over 25 hours a week, and my responsibilities were constantly increasing. As time went on I began managing the Junior Academy, the same academy sessions I used to shadow Daz running. I was also leading programmes for nationally ranked athletes and scholars, and continued to help out on the pro programme Daz was managing. I even had students from Hertfordshire uni come in to shadow me for their assignments, how the tables had turned.

Recently a job opportunity came up with another tennis company as Head of Strength and Conditioning. This was a great chance for me to take a step up and further develop my career. Daz fully supported my application, which was great. He even helped me prepare for the interview. As of the 1^st August 2015, I am proud to say I am Head of Strength and Conditioning with Challenge Tennis based in Chesham, Buckinghamshire.

During my time at Gosling, and to this day in fact, I’m always looking to increase my knowledge and coaching practice through journals, seminars, and through discussions with other S&C practitioners. I believe this emphasis on my own coach education and continued professional development has been a huge factor in my rise from shadowing coaches to head of department.

My time at Gosling helped me develop my craft. I learnt to take a holistic approach to my coaching and to coach the person first, and the player second, allowing me to get the best out of their talent. I came to Gosling as a Trainer, and left as a Coach.

Paddy Waplington

BSc (Hons), ASCC

Head of Strength & Conditioning

Challenge Tennis

Why should an athlete employ an S&C coach?

July 25, 2015/in APA Blog /by dazdrake

This week I am giving you a FREE presentation which answers the fundamental question- why should an athlete use an S&C coach?

Who need’s an S&C coach?

I’ve had the opportunity in recent weeks and months to speak to a number of coaches who work with athletes, whether they be Head coaches for a sports team, a Director of a Sports Academy or a Head of department of PE in a school. I have been speaking to them to see if they might be interested in working with APA to run some S&C sessions with their athletes.

I have first sought to understand what some of the barriers are to being able to do this. There are two common barriers.

Barrier #1: Cost

On pretty much every occasion there has been some degree of reluctance to want to invest in strength & conditioning coaching with their athletes due to its cost. Often it comes down to resources available and I accept that not everyone can afford to pay for professional strength & conditioning coaching, particularly if they are already paying for sports coaching.

But the cost of NOT investing in strength & conditioning could mean that your greatest ‘assets’ will get injured at some point in the future if you don’t take action. Even if you can’t afford to put a full-time coach into your programme I’d encourage you to at least get your athletes screened to see who might be more at risk of injury. This way you can do something about things before they happen.

Barrier #2: Time

Closely followed by #1 is the argument that the athletes don’t have the time to invest in further coaching on top of an already full weekly schedule of school academics (if we’re talking about adolescents), extra curricular activities, all in addition to their sports teams commitments. This is a real issue if the athletes in question have commitments to their school teams, as well as local clubs and even county or regional teams they play for. It is even more so if the athlete is playing in several sports teams.

Again, we can look at solutions to these challenges, even something as simple as training up the sports coach or teacher on how to run a high quality warm-up will go a long way to maximising the returns on a limited time and money budget.

Sound like your situation?

So it’s important that as the Director of an S&C company I can make a strong case for why they need to value S&C at a high enough level that they are willing to pay for it in some form. As I am so passionate about helping athletes realise their athletic potential I work very hard with whoever wants to work with us to come up with a solution that can achieve this.

Below is a presentation which I would urge any athlete or programme Director to watch if you are wondering why an athlete should employ an S&C coach.

The full presentation is 39 minutes- but I think that to do the topic justice and really answer the question properly it needs that long. In the presentation I discuss:

Long-term athlete development and the 10,000 hours rule
The age that professional sportsmen and women hit their peak
The consequences of early specialisation
The benefits of strength training
Why athletes get injured
How to properly screen athletes

I hoped you found this blog interesting and will challenge your thinking the next time you are thinking about employing the services of a strength & conditioning coach!

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ABCs for Kids- a session plan for FREE

July 17, 2015/in APA Blog /by dazdrake

Yesterday I had the pleasure of doing some coach education for a group of students in Year 10 and 11 from the Dacorum School Sports Network who undertake work experience, training and development within the schools in the Dacorum network around the borough of Dacorum.

The concept for the two hour workshop was to introduce the topic of Physical Literacy to the coaches and get them to think about how they can work on the athleticism of the children they are coaching even within a sports coaching session. The children in question would be typically 10-14 years although they might also be Primary school aged children 5-11 years.

I actually wish more new coaches would get exposure to this kind of topic as it amazes me even now how many highly experiences sports coaches fail to make the link between athleticism and ability in sports. Often it’s not until one of their star athletes gets injured due to a lack of physical preparedness that they are ready to listen.

Don’t believe me- watch this clip. Spoiler alert: be prepared to look away if you’re squeamish.

Below is a summary of what we covered:

Oaklands College, 16th July 2015 1:30PM- 3:30PM

About the workshop:

This workshop brought together the presenter’s extensive experience and background in the field of youth coaching to give the participant a thorough overview of the current theory and practical application of basic drills that can assist in the development of balance, coordination and strength for Sport.

The content included but was not limited to the following areas:

The four components of a warm-up
The two types of balance and how to train them
The four types of coordination and how to train them
The two types of strength and how to train them

About the presenter:

Warm-up:

Ask any sports coach how they integrate strength & conditioning into their sessions and if they integrate it at all it is usually always in the warm-up. That’s why it is essential to maximise this time- which depending on the programme can be anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes typically.

‘RAMP’

Pulse raiser: skipping / Swedish handball / Simon says / Follow the leader

Activation: single leg balance / crawling

Mobilise: big steps / mini man / caterpillar walk

Potentiate: Coordination the big 7- single knee dead-leg lift / side steps / high skips / cross-over side shuffle side shuffle / butt kicks / cross-overs / high side skips

You can actually view an example of the Junior Academy complete warm-up below.

Please note the Junior Academy warm-up is for our 12 years and above age-group. For the 11 and unders we would use a couple of different balance and crawling challenges but it’s essentially the same concept.

Main Session:

We went on to build on the warm-up and actually look at what we might do with a group of young athletes. If I have 60 minutes with a group my session structure might look something like this. I have spoken on numerous occasions about the benefits of a ‘complex’ session structure for developing athletes. By this I mean a session which hits a lot of different components in the same session. I find this gives you the most ‘bang for your buck’ when you’re aiming to develop multiple athletic skills with children who will improve in pretty much everything you give them in the early years.

SKILL		(balance)>>(coordination)
SPEED		(Jumps)>(reactions)>(1st step: Fast feet/start)>(Sprints)
AGILITY		(multi-directional speed)
STRENGTH		(Animals/Gymnastics/Partner work)
STAMINA		GAME

Some ideas for drills for Balance, Coordination & Strength:

We finished up by looking at some different drills we could use for a few of the components. Watch out over the next few weeks for videos that I will add to this blog post of some of the drills below.

Balance:

Drills:

Static balance: shoulder stands / hand stands / single leg balance / compass reach

Dynamic balance:

Walks- marching / lunging (add bead bag)
Reaching- squat & reach / lunge & reach
Jumping- 2-to-2 / 1-to-2 / 1-to-2 / 1-to-1

Coordination:

Drills:

Rhythm: skipping rope / partner mirroring / ladders / hurdles

Synchronisation: crawl / sidestep / hop, skip, jump / rolling / get ups / throw

Orientation: ball around body / ball above head / catching / striking / rolling- advanced

Differentiation: throw to targets / bouncing / football keep ups / racket keep ups

Strength:

Core Stability:

Core foundation: plank lifts / bird dog / dead bug

Core endurance: back raise hold / glute bridge hold / plank hold / 45 degree leg lower hold / dish hold / crunch hold / side plank hold / side crunch hold

Foundation strength:

Squat: Partner squats / Wall squats / Wall squat and reach / Get ups

Lunge: Split squat / rotational squat / lateral squat >> progress to lunge

Push: Push up hold / elevated push ups / push up

Pull: Partner rows / Inverted rows / Jump pull ups / Pull ups

What is Integrated Sports Performance? Insights from Team Bath

July 12, 2015/in APA Blog /by dazdrake

On Wednesday 1st July I had the opportunity to go to the University of Bath to listen to Joe Eisenmann talk about Spartan Performance, a programme which in collaboration with MSU SportsMEDICINE and Rehabilitation Medicine, provides an integrated, holistic approach to the care and training of mid-Michigan athletes, especially High School aged athletes.

Joe was invited by Team Bath to talk about his programme to their coaches at the world class facilities of the Sports Training Village in Bath. More on his talk later. First let’s look at how the University of Bath do it:

Team Bath have a Talent Development Centre which looks for athletes between the ages of 11-18 years old who take part in a range of sports or who have a chosen sport and are competing to a high level within their age group. Their programme consists of after school sessions for children,

£5.00 a session based on attending one session a week

£4.50 a session based on attending two or more sessions a week.

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
5.00-6.00pmSpeed & Agility	5.30-6.30pm Learn to Lift/Strength Sessions	5.00-6.00pm Learn to Lift/Strength Sessions	No sessions currently running	5.00-6.00pm Learn to Lift/Strength Sessions
6.00-7.00pm Learn to Lift/Strength Sessions	7.00-8.00pm Learn to Lift	6.00-7.00pmSpeed & Power	No sessions currently running	6.00-7.00pmSpeed/Agility/Power Sessions

What I really like is that they make sure that every potential participant is assessed first following a written application, so they can learn something about the athlete first and then be put in the most appropriate group.

So how do they do it on the other side of the pond? Let’s take a look at Spartan Performance

Check out the website HERE

I came away from Joe’s talk with lots of ideas for future growth. Below are some of the key things I took away:

Difference between Multi-disciplinary and Inter-disciplinary

Although we think of the US being years ahead in terms of advances in sport, Joe said it’s still pretty uncommon for practitioners to integrate. Most high school athletes will still be coached in the gym by a member of the teaching staff, usually and ex college football player. Even those that have access to sports medicine and sports coaching will usually go to different places to get these services and none of the practitioners speak to each other.

Because Spartan Performance is set up in collaboration with MSU SportsMEDICINE and Rehabilitation Medicine, it’s a programme on one campus where the different faculty experts from within the University are not only on one site, but they also integrate.

”It’s not experts working separately; it’s the expertise that come TOGETHER- that is true integration.”

Importance of Athlete Profiling

A typical athlete profile will include:

-3 day nutrition log analysis

-Psychological profile

-High speed treadmill video- running mechanics analysis

-Foot quickness: 4 square test

-Explosive leg power: 18″ drop jump

-Strength: two leg and single leg Leg press and Push up

-Agility: Pro agility 5-10-5

Joe made the point of knowing the athlete’s cumulative workload- before they even train them. In addition to testing, both Team Bath and Sports Performance will ask athletes to fill out detailed questionnaires about their training history and current sports participation.

This also means reaching out to their other coaches, as usually as well as going to Spartan for S&C they usually have school practice, team practice and often in more than one sports.

Be prepared to turn athletes away from the facility IF they are already doing multiple practices, doing S&C elsewhere and are generally really busy. They do ask athletes to complete pre-session wellness questionnaires but they can have pros and cons.

+ they can detect signs of fatigue if filled out properly

– athletes will cheat the system by falsifying the scores- it comes from the right place. They want to train!

Therefore as stated before it’s better if you can be pro-active and speak to the other coaches of the teams and start to build up a picture of what they do elsewhere and be prepared to coordinate their weekly schedules.

Session Structure- 90 minute session

Typically there will be six athletes to a group and the groups will move through different zones on a 20-minute rotation. In each zone is a different station. As one group leaves the first zone another one enters.

Zone 1- High Speed Treadmill running: 12-30 x 4-60-sec, can go up to 30mph and 30%

Zone 2- Multi-directional speed: 8-25 sets including Fitlights technology

Zone 3- Power: 25-40 sets plyometrics and tethered four square

Zone 4- Functional strength

Zone 5- Recovery and nutrition

Hot off the Press!

APA launch group S&C squads for athletes 11 and above.

Athletic Performance Academy

Inspired by my visits to Team Bath and hearing about Spartan Performance APA have finally been given the go ahead to open up the very successful strength & conditioning squads at Gosling Tennis Academy to the general public. Once only available to our elite Tennis Academy players we can now welcome new athletes from all sports.

We are now inviting young athletes 11-16 years old into our APA 4-5pm S&C squads. We are also inviting athletes over 16 years into our 10:30-11:30am pro team squads. I think this is a great concept so please come along to Gosling Sports Park to take part. It is pay as you go, £5 for GSP members and £7.50 for non members.

You can now book at reception.

Insights into Leicester Tigers Academy and Somerset CCC

July 3, 2015/in APA Blog /by dazdrake

I’m been on the road for several weeks. Started at Excel Centre, London, then University of Hertfordshire, then Oakham School, Rutland, then University of Bath and I’ll be finishing my conference trip at the UKSCA Conference next month.

Travel and networking isn’t for everyone, but I personally love the adventure of being at the ‘tip of the spear.’ I love listening to people speak at events, make new friends and catch up with old ones and most importantly bring back some tips we can put into the programme at APA and share with you reading the blog!

In this blog I’ll go over the first three conferences I went to. I’ll follow up with my visit to Bath next time!

What I learnt:

Elite Sports Performance Expo 10-11 June 2015

This was the inaugural 2-day exposition, see the website Elite Sports Performance Expo. For me the exhibitors stands were the most enjoyable part. I find it hard to focus on the seminars and live demos when there are 1,500 people walking through the area- but that’s just me. I’ll be looking to work with some sports drink companies over the coming months so hopefully APA will be able to offer you some great deals with our partners.

It was good fun getting a sweat test with Precision Hydration- I learnt I have a high sweat rate and need a higher concentration of electrolytes in my drink than most standard electrolytes.

Enjoyed getting an intrinsic biomechanics assessment with Biomechanics Education. I learnt I have a functional leg length difference causing the foot of my shorter leg to flatten.

Herts Sports Partnership- discussing coaching delivery in Hertfordshire

HSP invited a number of active coaches in the region to a discussion of new developments to enhance coaching delivery in the region.

This half-day conference wasn’t directly related to APA’s core business- working with athletes who want us to help them with their physical preparation for sport. It focused more on projects to increase participation in sports clubs, as well as ideas on how to help multi-sports companies get into schools.

But I did learn that only 3% of sports coaches are Full-time according to the 2011 SportscoachUK survey. In that study they found that the majority of coaching takes place at a sport club or as part of extra curricular school activity (outside PE)……..but interestingly, the recent Active People survey by Sport England shows that the majority of sports participation is not taking place within clubs. So there is a lot of sport taking place without coaching!

Oakham School: S&C in Schools Conference

Glad to have been able to get to the very first one organised by Joel Tratt, Head of S&C at Oakham School.

There was a really nice blend of presentations from both Joel and his Director of Sport, Iain Simpson, as well as two practitioners in the sports of Cricket and Rugby, by Daz Veness and Kev Mannion, respectively.

Below is a selection of some of the key slides that grabbed my attention and a little about what was said about them.

#Increase an athlete’s ability to apply force

Only the other day did I retweet a quote my former colleague Julie Gooderick wrote, ”All sports require force expression, therefore all sports and ages will benefit from appropriate strength training.” It’s incredible the number of coaches, parents and even athletes who fail to understand the basic Newton’s Law of equal and opposite reactions.

A lot of coaches relate getting strong to getting bulky and slow. What they want is to get their athletes fast and explosive right? Well, assuming we put together a well designed strength programme that won’t get you bigger or more bulky, then if your mass stays the same and you get stronger, you get better at accelerating!!!!

#Athlete Development Journey

The Progressions that the athletes go through at Oakham exactly parallels the 6 Stages of Development we take our athletes through at APA. We represent the journey with a 3 level pyramid but it’s the same progression.

Daz Vennes showed a similar slide to highlight the exact motor competency journey at Somerset CCC

The 5 levels refer to his progression of bodyweight movement skills which increase in difficulty starting with your basic squat/lunge/hinge/press up/inverted rows/plank movements. These movement skills then progress through five levels until at level 5 we are looking at unilateral strength qualities, olympic lifting progressions etc. These movement skills are are a constant part of the programme right from Under 11’s all the way to the pros- it’s just the complexity that is added to keep the movements challenging as they progress through the ranks.

In terms of the muscular strength journey referred to above Daz goes on to explain exactly how he would progress beyond bodyweight skills for his 16 years and above Academy athletes whom he starts to introduce load to.

Level 1:

Achieving BW loads in max effort drills determines progression to Level 2. Sets of 10, then 6-8 once BW load is achieved

Level 2:

Achieving 1.5BW determines progression to Level 3. Sets of 6-8 then Sets of 3-5 once 1.5BW is achieved.

Level 3:

Similar strength load goals but Olympic lifting becomes a fully fledged session

Level 4:

Achieving 2.0BW determines progression to Level 5

#Oakham School S&C Philosophy

Again exactly mirrors the APA Philosophy except we simply refer to the 5 S (Suppleness, Skill, Strength, Speed, Stamina)

#Simple philosophy- strength foundation not sport specific training

This kind of work lays a foundation for potential specialised programmes down the line. It’s another big myth in the sports performance community- that an exercise ALWAYS has to look like the sport action to transfer.

The final goal of competition exercises in Olympic sports ”Citius, Altius, Fortius‟ – ”Faster, Higher, Stronger‟) may almost always be related to the capacity to express power produced by the speed of movements and by the force of overcoming external resistance.
Consequently, the training process, focused on improving the sports result, could be defined as the process of increasing the power output of competition exercise.

I have read a lot of the western interpretations of the Soviet training programmes. Sometimes the work of coaches like Anatoliy Bondarchuk and Yuri Verkhoshansky get misapplied to developmental level athletes. These coaches were delivering specific strength training programmes known as ‘special strength training’ to elite level Olympic track & field runners and throwers.

For me the essence of all sports skills lies in the movement of the human body….and the efficient movement of the human body at that. All sport skills are just a combination of different basic motor tasks known as motor patterns put together to complete a sports skill.

A generally dysfunctional body/motor pattern will translate into a sport specific dysfunctional pattern.

I totally get that from both a biomechanics and biokinetics stand point we want to ensure that the forces we train in the gym are applied to a movement pattern that will translate to improved sports performance. Exercises can be chosen on the base of the Dynamic correspondence Principle and should get more specific when looking to develop power in later phases of training. But if the athlete has not yet acquired the ability to perform the patterns of movement that are the basis of all sports movements then we are missing the point. Get the basics right first. Understand where your athlete is on their journey and don’t be in a rush to work on the specifics if the foundations aren’t in place.

#Leicester Tigers RFU Academy

Competition:

The green phases are competition phases. Leicester Tigers Academy run a split playing phase over 30 weeks. In competition phases rugby is a priority. As you can see they don’t play every week, there may be up to 9 weeks when there is no match. It just means there will be more exposures to rugby practice and less to S&C. Maybe 4-5 Rugby and 3-4 S&C.

Training:

At the end of the playing season (around Apr/May) the players will do a Hypertrophy block 1 (in Orange) doing 5 days a week weights to get some functional mass gains. Then they get some rest for a few weeks before returning for another Hypertrophy block 2 (but with a slightly reduced frequency of lifts-down to 4 with 2 on the feet conditioning sessions to get used to running around with more mass.)

Once competition gets going they will replace higher volume hypertrophy blocks with lower volume high intensity maximal strength blocks. They will then revisit hypertrophy for a few weeks before another maximal strength block as the next competition blocks gets going.

Compare this to a typical Independent schools competition and training calendar which starts in September off the back of a summer break. Is 17-19 school and Academy fixtures in each term with minimal preparation and a 10 week holiday ideal?? Er…….No. It puts massive emphasis on the student to follow a hypertrophy/strength programme while they are away from school- and this is less than ideal.

However, could make an argument that school athlete’s over-play and under-train, and maybe vice versa in an Academy?

14-16 years old squads:

”Our focus was to introduce systems and processes with our 14-16 age groups that would allow us to have better co-ordinated, more athletic entrants to the full time Academy system.” Kevin Mannion.

Integrated S&C into the Rugby session

This allowed the coaches to get 50% of the session focused on S&C meaning that even if the younger athletes were only getting to train with Leicester for one training session per week they ensured that they still got some quality exposure to S&C by implementing movement skill stations between the sport skills stations.

I hoped you found this blog interesting and will challenge your thinking the next time you are about to observe performance in one of your athletes!