A few weeks ago I took part in another webinar around physical conditioning for Tennis players – ”The Golden Circle of Physical Development- The Why, How & what.” The webinar was hosted by Dario Novak, and featured Ruben Neyens who spoke about young athletes at the U14 level.  The webinar explored ways to bridge the gap between sports science (Why & How) and the practical on-court implementation (What) of physical training.

–>Follow @darionovak_ph.d   (Dr. Dario Novak)

–>Follow @ruben.neyens        (Ruben Neyens)

I was interested to hear this coach speak as I was always interested in his exercise selection, and the drills he uses with his tennis players. Today I wanted to share a few of his insights that resonated with me from the talk and perhaps share some other pieces of information.

Firstly, this talk was intended for the development of 14U players, however, other age groups would benefit from these pearls of wisdom.

The talk built a case for the Golden circle, I believe the book it came from was “Start with why” In this case;

1. Why = Reason and value of physical conditioning
2. How = Method and plan
3. What = Activity and coaching

Broken escalator problem

Unfortunately, I could not find the commercial on the internet. But, I was shown a clip of two people on an escalator, the escalator stopped working and rather than just walking the remainder of the journey, the users stood there in confusion. This led to some provocative and open ended questioning by Ruben.

“Do you the see the problem?”

“When you do find the problem, are you going to be the one that solves it?”

This boils down to a couple of key things. Understanding the demands of Tennis and the individual in front of you. With regards to the demands a colleague of mine referred to something called “performance backwards” which seemed to stick. This will lead us nicely on to the next topic.

Demands of Tennis (Reason & Value)

I am going to split this section up into two sections as the first section was interesting.

1. General demands

Tennis (unless playing doubles) is an individual sport and also a fairly silent game. Well, what does this mean? It means that not only do players have to demonstrate problem solving abilities, they have to demonstrate high energy/intensity without the quarrying motivation from their coaches. Ruben honourably said as a young coach “He would shout at the players to augment energy within a session.”

This was interesting and reading some of Dan John’s work showing the importance of creating the right synergy between Physical tension, Heart rate and arousal level, an imbalance of this synergy can throw off performance.

The length of a Tennis game is often dictated by the score, highlighting its unpredictability. It was mentioned that Ruben tends to try and replicate this by creating some unpredictability in the length of his training sessions. I was scratching my head around this, in the real world this sounds like a logistical nightmare. However, I also know some coaches like to use “Trading conditioning”. This is creating a scenario where there is unpredictability how many repetitions are performed of a particular conditioning drill, athletes remain clueless and you keep performing the task until told to stop.

From a perception-action standpoint players are reacting to “visual cues” which I see Ruben complimenting, by using lights and various visual aids for his reactive based speed work.

2. Physical demands

In this section I am not going to mention all of the physical demands I currently know, just the ones that stood out to me. Last year I wrote an article on “demands of the game” but I wanted to add to it by mentioning a few key points.

• Average 3-5 changes of direction per point
• Average 800 changes of direction per match

What I admired about this talk is Ruben is so honest with his mistakes, he mentioned that when he reflected on his programming he was training his players for long rallies (not the intention) which was not reflective of the game.

Stop start cycle

Tennis is characterised by what he called a “stop start cycle”. Where players have to start, move, hit & recover. Along with the locomotive demands players have to be able to orient their bodies well whilst maintaining balance, highlighting the need to control their bodies in order to hit the ball effectively.

Why do we need physical training?

So a question was asked. “Why do we need physical training on top of tennis training?” These four overarching topics were brought forward.

• Fundamentals – Teaching fundamentals of good movement
• Performance – Enhancing performance
• Prevention – Injury prevention/keeping athletes healthy
• Variation– Keeping training interesting and varied.

I don’t think I need to go into any of these topics in too much detail however, I quite liked the point he made about variation and providing a nice change (from tennis training) for young athletes.

How do you implement physical training

Building the Layers

Firstly, it’s determining what you want to work on, “what is my goal?” I particularly enjoyed this section because it succinctly connects the training puzzle. I have always believed that the art of programming is not the individual training units, rather how it fits together in the big picture you are trying to paint.

At APA we refer to these fitness components as the 5 S’s- skill, speed, strength, stamina and suppleness.

It was mentioned that you may work on a number of these in a session however this is best delivered as a “starter” & a “main dish” where the main dish is the prolific quality and the “starter” may include other training qualities in smaller amounts. For example, the use of “Movement breaks” within a session.

From the qualities we are trying to develop, comes the delivery and the organisation of exercises, “Are we trying to learn, develop or perform the skill?”

This just follows a systematic progression of exercises. When we learn an exercise/skill we slow it down and reduce its complexity. As we develop a skill we may increase spatial and temporal pressure. Finally, there is performing the skill with added pressure, complexity and competition. But, the question is; “Does the skill survive?”

Types of physical training 

I am paraphrasing here but Ruben suggests that “The role of the physical trainer is to develop the physical qualities, not correct technique around tennis skills.”

This section refers to the degree of specificity. Is training, general, orientated, integrated or specific? Where orientated training may look like a footwork drill using a tennis ball “bounce and catch” to mimic the stop-start cycle or specific training where there is the use of a Racket and Tennis ball. An example of integrated training is using medicine balls throws preceding hitting ground strokes.

The 3-D model

This creates a 3-D model of training, and it is something I am going to reflect on in my training. Having drills where there is clearer system and intention on the type and intensity of exercises/drills, these can then be selected at certain times.

This was a great presentation with many more points however, I wanted to highlight the aforementioned points in particular. I hope you learn from the work of Ruben, I certainly did.

Do you feel that this would be a perfect time to work on the weak links that you have been avoiding? The things that you know you should be doing that you keep putting off? Would you like us to help you with movement screening and an injury prevention program? Then click on the link below and let us help you!

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Hey Everyone.  My name is Daz, owner of Athletic Performance Academy and chances are you are reading this blog because you have an interest in the question, ‘should we treat all children the same?’

Let me start off by saying that this is not a post examining some of the prominent issues of the day around gender equality, race hate or any other important issues of social inequality that plagues our world.  I certainly don’t feel I’m qualified in my coaching role to discuss these topics and I would respectfully say that this blog does not address these issues directly.  However, in my role as a coach which I define as ”someone who facilitates learning,” I feel that the notion of treating all children the same from a learning perspective warrants further inspection.

Role of the Coach

If you’re reading this blog as a coach, you may not identify yourself as a ‘facilitator of learning’ (which may sound more like a teacher) but I would encourage you to reflect on this. Ultimately whether you are helping athletes achieve championship winning performances on the sports field, or achieving Academic excellence in the classroom, the objective is the same- facilitate learning.

As I approach my 40th birthday and celebrate 20 years as a professional coach I’m reflecting on the apparent paradox that my coaching philosophy has been built on the idea of ‘conformity,’ which while it gives each child the exact same education and opportunity, may not actually be the best way to help my athletes learn!

Conformity is based on an industrial or mechanical model of education- a ‘fast food’ model where everything is standardised-  based on linearity, and gives every child the same educational experience.  This leads to a degree of certainty of what will come out at the other end (children educated to fulfill their role in the workplace). I too have largely coached this way for most of my career with a command and control style and a ‘mechanical formula’ for building athletes on my APA production line.  Like many things in life, this formulaic approach works better for some and less so for others.  But I’ve always tried to make it work for everyone, even if it sometimes feels like fitting a square peg in a round hole.

I recently spoke to two noteworthy teachers who I respect, one was one of my University Professors, who has recently retired and another is a former teacher of History in a well respected London independent school.  Both teachers shared the belief that you ‘can’t save all the whales,’ which basically means that there are some children/students who want to learn, and others who don’t.  Put your time into the ones who want to be there (and forget about the rest).  You can’t help them all.  I have always struggled with this concept, it just doesn’t seem to be the right thing to do.  I will acknowledge that teaching 30 children in a classroom will probably give you a different perspective, but I still feel that every child needs to be given an opportunity to realise their potential, even if it isn’t outwardly showing itself now. (For what it’s worth I did teach in Further Education for two years, teaching ”boring stuff” to 16-18 year olds, many who didn’t want to be there, so I do have some experience to base my comments on.)

My question is whether the mechanical model which ‘treats all children the same’ is part of the reason why some children seemingly fail in a system that is based on a ‘one size fits all approach.’  Do we just give our energy to the children who thrive in this environment, or do we need to change the environment, or at least give more opportunities to experience different environments, ones where more children actually want to learn in?

My definition of an APA coach is a ‘inspirational, honest, professional and courageous coach who is self-aware and coaches unconditionally to help their athletes maximise their potential.”

Many of my coaches have struggled with this concept of unconditional coaching; ”You mean you want me to give as much time and energy to the children who don’t want to be there, as the ones who do?” they would say.  ”You mean I need to spend as much time writing a plan for the children who have no talent, as the ones who clearly have a much better chance of making it?”

My concept of coaching unconditionally largely revolves around the concept that ‘no child gets left behind.’  You must meet them where they are at, maybe they are NOT READY to learn NOW, or perhaps they will never be ready to learn in the way you are presenting the information.  But never give up on them before they give up on themselves and always search for ways to ignite their fire for something.  Just find what they are currently willing/able to do and move them to the next step.  It may not be where they ‘need’ to be based on some expected or desired level of achievement, but if it is progress it still needs to be acknowledged and celebrated.

Reforming Public Education

In many conversations I have with parents I often draw parallels with the Academic journey to explain long-term athletic development.  Maybe you have too.  Furthermore, I certainly draw on my knowledge of teaching methods in the classroom to inform my coaching methods.  What is interesting is that there has been a call for education reform for many years now- the way we educate children in the classroom served us economically and culturally at the time of it’s creation- the mid 19th century.  But it no longer serves the children of the 21st century.

This blog will examine the current state of the education system, and some of the great work of the late Sir Ken Robinson, an international education advisor in the Arts who championed education reform.  He was passionate about creative and cultural education, with the goal to unlock and ignite the creative energy of people and organisations, which he felt was sadly lacking in the current education system.

My coaching philosophy has clearly been influenced by my understanding of how we learn in school, so I’d like to look at this first and then in a follow up blog, highlight some practical considerations for coaching practices I can employ in the next 20 years of my career.

Please stick with me, I hope you will see that much of what is good (and bad) in the classroom could be applied to the sports field.  Part 1 of this blog will address the challenges.  My follow up blog will address the possible solutions.

The Modern Challenge of Public Education

What follows is an overview of a talk by Sir Ken Robinson- Changing Education Paradigms

According to Sir Ken there are two reasons why we need to reform public education:

1. ECONOMIC – how do we educate our children to take their place in the economies of the 21st century?
2. CULTURAL – how do we educate our children so they have a sense of cultural identity, so we can pass on the ‘cultural genes’ of our communities, while we become part of the process of globalisation.

The problem is we are trying to meet the ‘future’ with what we did in the ‘past,’ and along the way we are alienating millions of kids who don’t see any purpose in going to school.  In the past, we were kept there with a story that if you worked hard and did well and got a college degree you would get a job.  Our kids don’t believe that (now)!  You’re better having a degree than not, but it’s not a guarantee anymore.  And particularly not if the route to it marginalises most of the things you think are important about YOURSELF.

The problem is the current system of education was designed and conceived and structured for a different age.  It was conceived in the INTELLECTUAL CULTURE of the ENLIGHTENMENT, and in the ECONOMIC circumstances of the INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.

At the time it was a revolutionary idea to provide formal public education that was:

• Paid for by taxation
• Compulsory to everyone
• Free at the point of delivery

People at the time could not conceive that the working class were capable of learning to read and write but it was seen as necessary to insure the future growth of the industrial revolution.

[Unfortunately] the view of intelligence at the time was based on the enlightenment view of intelligence known as DEDUCTIVE REASONING– or ‘top-down logic’ which contrasts with inductive reasoning (“bottom-up logic”): in deductive reasoning, a conclusion is reached reductively by applying general rules which hold over the entirety of a range of topics, narrowing the range under consideration until only the conclusion(s) remains. In deductive reasoning there is no uncertainty.

In inductive reasoning, the conclusion is reached by generalizing or extrapolating from specific cases to general rules resulting in a conclusion that has uncertainty.

People who were good at deductive reasoning were come to be thought of as having Academic ability.  People who were not good at this were thought of as non Academic, or not smart!  The consequence of this way of thinking that runs deep in the gene pool of education (even until this day in my opinion) is that many brilliant people think they are not smart, because they’ve been judged against this particular view of the mind.

Don’t get me wrong- this approach has been great for some, who have wonderfully benefited from it but many have not.

I am a case in point.  I wasn’t really sure of what I was good at until I arrived at University.  My entire formal education at University was based on deductive reasoning and I learned fast that I was extremely good at it- synthesising large volumes of academic research into a succinct conclusion based on the available evidence.  There was something very predictable about this method of learning and I lapped it up- gaining almost exclusively A grades for the majority of my time there.  It gave me an enormous sense of confidence but was also in my opinion one of the main reasons I went on to have some of the most severe and almost life ending depression one can experience, something that I have been very public about, and occurred when I left the relative safety of the Academic environment.

In my opinion modern education still serves people who ultimately aspire to be guess what?   A University professor!  It’s designed for people who ‘LIVE IN THEIR HEAD.’   For as good as it was for my development as an Academic I felt completely unprepared for a life outside Academia, and I often wondered if the depression I felt once I left Academia was comparable to how many students feel when they are inside it and are trying to force themselves to endure a system rather than enjoy it.

Our children now are living in the most INTENSELY STIMULATING period in the history of the Earth.  They are being besieged with information that pulls their attention from every platform- computers, Iphones, TV channels and advertising; and we’re penalising them for getting distracted- from what? Boring stuff! (at school, for the most part!).

Perhaps there is a place for more AESTHETIC experiences within schools.  This is known as DIVERGENT thinking.

Divergent thinking is a thought process or method used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions. It typically occurs in a spontaneous, free-flowing, “non-linear” manner, such that many ideas are generated in an emergent cognitive fashion.

Education has been increasingly based on conformity and standardisation- and instead Sir Ken believes we need to go in the opposite direction, what Sir Ken means by changing paradigms!

One of the things that Sir Ken concluded was that most great learning happens in groups- collaboration is the stuff of growth.  I had to have a chuckle as being an academic type myself, I absolutely hated group work at University.   I knew that the conclusions to be drawn were self-evident in the research and having more people (who I perceived to be less capable than myself at deductive reasoning) would just slow the process down. I didn’t need to share ideas, the Academics of the time had already presented the most noteworthy findings and our job was simply to present them in a logical way to draw a natural conclusion.  Having someone repeatedly ask, ‘but what if?’ wasn’t going to get me a better grade!

But for many, let’s say, more creative divergent thinkers, group work is at the heart of human spirit.  Please watch How To Escape Education’s Death Valley which talks about the drop out crisis in USA and the three conditions in which humans flourish.

I’ll wrap up this blog with a summary of some of the points made.

Drop Out Crisis

Up to 60% of children drop out of High school and up to 80% of native Americans (in some parts of the country in the USA).

But the drop out crisis is just the tip of the iceberg.  What it doesn’t count is the number of children who are in school, BUT ARE DISENGAGED from it, who DON’T ENJOY IT, who don’t get any real benefit from it.

Some people want to learn, and some don’t.  Every student who drops out of school has a reason for it which is rooted in their own biography.  They may find it boring, irrelevant, at odds with the life they are living outside of school/University.  These are trends but the stories are always unique.

It could be argued that education fails many people because it dislocates very many people from their natural talents.  Human resources or ‘talents’ are like natural resources- they don’t show up on the surface, they’re buried deep, you have to go looking for them and and CREATE THE CIRCUMSTANCES WHERE THEY SHOW THEMSELVES.

It’s about PASSION.  Passion is what excites our spirit and our energy.  And if you’re doing the thing that you love to do, that you’re good at, time takes a different course entirely, an hour feels like 5 minutes.  The reason so many people are opting out of education is because it doesn’t feed their energy, spirit or passion.

There are three principles on which HUMAN LIFE FLOURISHES, and they are contradicted by the culture of education, under which most teachers have to labour and most students have to endure.  Sir Ken Robinson

These are:

• Human beings are naturally DIVERSE– school system is not based on diversity but on conformity.  Teachers are asked to find out what kids can do across a very narrow spectrum of achievement (and mostly through standardisation and testing).  Kids prosper best with a broad curriculum that celebrates their various talents, not just a small range of them.

• Humans are CURIOUS– if you can light the spark of curiosity of a child, they will learn without any further assistance very often.  Curiosity is the engine of achievement.  Teaching is a creative profession; teaching properly conceived, is not a DELIVERY SYSTEM.  You’re not there just to pass on received information.  Great teachers do that, but what great teachers also do is mentor, stimulate, provoke and engage.

• Human life is inherently CREATIVE– we create our lives by the restless process of imagining alternatives and possibilities, and one of the roles of education is to awaken and develop these powers of creativity.

Instead, what we have is a culture of standardisation.  Part of the problem is that the dominant culture of education has come to focus on, not teaching and learning, but testing.  Now testing is important, but they should not be the dominant culture.  They should be diagnostic.  They should help and support learning.  It shouldn’t obstruct it, which of course it often does.  So in place of curiosity, what we have is a culture of compliance.

Conclusions

Education is not a mechanical system.  It’s a human system.  It’s about people who either do want to learn, or don’t want to learn.

Our education system has mined our minds in the same way we strip-mine the Earth for a particular commodity.  And for the future, it won’t serve us.

In the follow up part 2 I will outline how we can go from an industrial mechanical manufacturing model of education, based on linearity and conformity to a model that is based on principles of agriculture. We have to recognise that human flourishing is not a mechanical process, and you cannot predict the outcome of human development.  All you can do, like a farmer, is create the conditions under which they begin to flourish.

With the initiation of a third lock down in the UK we thought it would be a great idea to engage our readers in some motivating posts to help keep you motivated.  We welcome back APA coach Konrad McKenzie with a weekly guest post.

This lockdown 3.0 I have been fortunate to gain some more knowledge from leading practitioners in strength and conditioning & sport science.  A few weeks ago I took part in webinar on load management by Dario Novak. This webinar series had interesting speakers on it including professor Ales Filipcic and Matt Little who currently leads Andy Murray’s strength and conditioning programme. This series inspired me to share the information and perhaps create more conversations around monitoring using some of my own thoughts.

I will be first to admit that this was something I struggled with in the first years of coaching. Not so much the theory behind it, rather the implementation in highly dynamic environments. Usually, it is much easier to monitor this if you have  large sports science departments who can meticulously monitor training readiness, volume, quality & intensity of training. As mentioned in my previous blog (Keeping athletes shoulder healthy) training volume is a large stakeholder when trying to reduce injury.

This blog will not go into all the different monitoring methods but will discuss the following:

• Why do we want to collect data on player’s health and performance?
• Painting the picture
• Do we need to look at session content?
• What we can start off by doing
• Practical implications

What and why do we want to collect data on player’s health and performance?

I am going to split this into two sections to make it more reader friendly.

What do we want to collect on player’s data health and performance?

A range of metrics can be collected in my opinion, the higher the level of the athlete the more in depth analysis needs to be. Metrics include (not an exhaustive list):

Player’s physiological and anthropometric  data

• Average heart rate
• HR zones
• HR recovery
• Morning HRV Index (menstrual cycle affects HRV)
• Cardiovascular load
• Peak height velocity (when dealing with growing athletes)
• Height and weight

Other metrics include time characteristics, in the case of Tennis these are:

Time characteristics

• Start time
• Session time
• Active time
• Average rally time
• Average real time

Why do we want to collect data on player’s health and performance?

Measuring a player’s health is important for longevity and injury prevention. We are all aware that high performance sports is brutal on the body.  If we think about the game of tennis for example, a high level junior player rapidly putting the brakes on when travelling at 6m/s is experiencing 3-6 times their bodyweight on each leg. Not only does this place structural and neurological stress on the body, training and competition can take a psychological toll on the human body. Additionally, those who work with growing athletes will also know the physiological stress around growth and maturation. In simpler terms we want to use data to:

• Keep players healthier
• Prevent OT & Burnout
• Aim to Reduce Injuries

Painting the picture

“It is better to measure something than nothing”

This was a quote that stood out to me from the webinar. I wanted to further add that it is also important to know what you are measuring and more importantly how you are going to use the data. Sounds obvious I know but it’s easy to get lost in a sea of data collection that will have no actionable consequences on day to day practices.  It is important that we use loading data to paint the picture of the athletes we are working with. Pertinent questions from the webinar regarding data collection were:

1. What kind of data/info do we use for planning?
2. How do we treat and approach our players?
3. How do we collect and store player’s data?
4. How many different aspects of training do we work in the training process?
5. What is the role of players in the training process?
6. How are the players responding to load?

Do we need to look at the session content? Some food for thought

Although when they spoke about session content it wasn’t focused on youth athlete training, it is a passion point of mine and definitely created some food for thought around this area. It was highlighted that a typical academy tennis session would be very high in volume and not high enough in terms of intensity.  The current training volumes may not be tolerable for a growing athlete. Also, if 60-80% of the average rally is over in 4-5 shots, are the current training volumes reflective of the game? This is an interesting question. My personal thoughts are, is there a period where we overload the volume? A period where we intensify in skill training load?  So, on different training days and/or phases we emphasize volume or intensity.

A primary question from the webinar was do we know what types of load we are exposing our players to? Is this reflected in the session? Some humbling questions.

It is quite common to see a session start with high volume drilling and end with high intensity match play. This webinar was in Tennis, however I see this across the board in a lot of field and court sports. Perhaps, flipping this structure will allow for a more optimal session, makes sense from a scientific point of view. Something for the skills and strength and conditioning coaches to converse over.

What we can start off by doing

Using Minutes alone, is not a good indicator of session load, without content of the session e.g. (Volume, intensity, quality)

There are countless articles and papers by people who are much smarter than me on this topic so I am not going to dive into any monitoring tools. I will link the reader to this article which I found informative.  But I wanted to highlight an idea which may be overlooked and that is categorising sessions. I have tried to do this over the years working with technical coaches to identify different types of sessions. For example, high and low intensity days. But we can go even deeper and distinguish between high intensity match play and high volume drilling. Furthermore, we could pair this with conditioning sessions which complement the type of loading from skill work. Vertical integration is popular in the domain of Rugby union and football and I am a firm believer in learning from different sports.

Practical recommendations

After hearing the webinar I wanted to offer some practical recommendations from the talk and some of my own. Firstly, I want to stress that this is by no means an easy task. Especially, if you are working alone without a team of sports scientists. I want to start off by saying first;

• Do the best you can.

• Figure out what is important to measure and how it will affect your decision making, for example, peak height and weight velocity in youth athletes.

• Build buy-in by educating coaches and athletes as to why you are collecting data.

• The higher the level of the athlete, the more in depth the analysis.

• Once you find out what you want to measure, find out the most cost effective way of doing this. There are a wide array of wearables that athletes can purchase which are fairly inexpensive. For example, Heart rate monitors for objective measurements.

• Once you have the collection method for example HR monitoring, paint the picture by working out the intensity of matches and seeing how that compares to training for planning purposes. Are we wanting to work at or below match intensity?

• Work with the technical coaches using your understanding of scientific underpinning of training and their knowledge of skill development to come up with an agreed monthly/yearly schedule.

Thanks for reading guys,

Konrad McKenzie

Strength and Conditioning coach.

Liked This Blog?

You might like other blogs on this topic from APA:

APA review of the Middlesex Students S&C conference 2014

The Dubious Rise of the Corrective Exercise ”Pseudo-Physio” Posing as a Trainer- My thoughts

as well as two recommended articles:

This article on weak Glutes during Squatting

And this one on Exercise Modifications 

Do you feel that this would be a perfect time to work on the weak links that you have been avoiding? The things that you know you should be doing that you keep putting off? Would you like us to help you with movement screening and an injury prevention program? Then click on the link below and let us help you!

? TRAIN WITH APA ?

Aspiring Pro Training Support Packages

Follow me on instagram @konrad_mcken

Follow Daz on instagram @apacoachdaz

With the initiation of a third lock down in the UK we thought it would be a great idea to engage our readers in some motivating posts to help keep you motivated.  We welcome back APA coach Konrad McKenzie with a weekly guest post.

Supporting Female Athletes

This lockdown I have been fortunate to gain some more knowledge from leading practitioners in strength and conditioning & sport science. A few weeks ago I was enlightened by some great speakers at the “The Well HQ”. The topic was around female health and performance. This was pertinent to me, as I am a male coach who currently works with a large amount of female athletes. I wanted to share some insights from this talk to enhance the awareness around this topic. This blog will be a synopsis of the webinar but will also contain some of my experiences training young female athletes, which will hopefully create some provocative insights. The blog will contain the following topics:

• Knowledge gaps
• What we do know about training female athletes
• Menstrual cycles and how it can affect performances
• Potential Barriers to sport and engagement
• Steps we could take to support female athletes better

“80% of active women said they haven’t had enough education in relation to their body and how it affects their sport”- Dr Bella Smith.

What we do know about training female athletes

There is a great book the “female athlete handbook of sports medicine” which I encourage you all to read. This book is quite extensive so I will give a very brief summary on parts of chapter 1&2 that stood out to me.

Female athlete triad

The female athlete triad is defined as a spectrum of three interrelated medical conditions 1) energy availability, 2) menstrual health and 3) bone health (ACSM, 2007). These conditions range from optimal/healthy range to a pathological state of low energy availability, amenorrhea, eating disorders & osteoporosis. It is said that in order for female athletes not to suffer any components of the triad, it is paramount that they understand their energy needs and train and live in an environment which supports healthy energy availability.

Non-contact ACL injuries

Female athletes are reported to have higher risks of non-contact ACL injuries. Interestingly, the research is trying to determine whether ACL injury is a result of gross failure of the ACL in one episode or multiple episodes over time. However, valgus of the knee and change in upper body trunk mechanics tend to be high risk factors for this. Although the research is said to be transient and the best intervention is not yet identified, changes in dynamic loading, proprioceptive training and sound coaching go a long way in mitigating these risk factors. Training programs containing a healthy dose of strength, power, plyometric and neuromuscular training, seem to have promising results.

From the Well HQ talk it was said that women are 4.5 times more likely to sustain an ACL injury. Although the skeletal structure and the anatomy of pelvis is non- modifiable, factors such as muscle imbalance, proprioception and landing mechanics can be trained.

Knowledge gaps in coaching female athletes

The aforementioned quote is alarming right? A high proportion of female athletes still to this day are not educated enough about their bodies. Why? It was suggested, that there may still be a reluctance to talk about it, due to feeling ashamed or embarrassed. Whilst this is perfectly understandable, the more we communicate about this the easier it will become.

“Trust takes years to build, seconds to break and forever to repair”

Gaining trust is vital for clear communication pathways especially about sensitive subjects so this quote is important to bear in mind. Furthermore, I would like to note that it is important not to take offence if a female athlete does not immediately open up to you about what she is experiencing, this is a delicate manner thus, it is important to guide her to someone she feels more comfortable talking too. Women, unlike men, appear to value the quality of a relationship as opposed to the quality of a coach, meaning you have to take the time to cultivate and nurture the relationships you have with your female athletes.

In my experience, I had a young female athlete who was going through her first menstrual cycle, you can imagine this was very troubling and awkward for her to mention. So she just gave me a sign and then I took the hint, to adjust certain exercises for her. Now whilst this is not very “scientific” it lead the way for her to download an app, which allows me to see when she’s entering that phase.  A pretty huge breakthrough if you ask me. More on this in “Steps we could take” Section

Lastly, the women at Well HQ gave another profound statistic. I was pretty shocked about this myself. As little as 4% of sports science research is done on women only. Moreover, they had mentioned that the 70% of research done on mixed groups fails to control for the changing physiology and psychology during the menstrual cycle.

Performance and the menstrual cycle

The team mentioned that a 28 day hormonal cycle can really affect a woman physically and emotionally. From a performance perspective an elite 1500m runner with a 4:03 minute time could, on the day before  (or on the same day of her period) run the same event in 4:15 minutes. That’s a colossal difference. Interestingly, determinants of performance such as VO2 max, running economy, strength and power are not significantly affected during a healthy cycle. However, how a woman feels emotionally and physically fluctuates as her hormones change. As a result, this challenges her ability to tap into peak performance.

It is known that having a period is a healthy sign of bodily function and health. On the other hand, 30% of female athletes lose their cycle at some point. To give an illustration of how significant this is, lack of periods meant a promising runner did not produce enough oestrogen (An important hormone in the cycle which aids bone strength) and thus developed osteoporosis in her 20s.

Interestingly, Oestrogen creates a great physiological environment for muscle growth and repair. So much, that strength gains in the first half of the cycle can improve by 15%.

Potential Barriers to sport and engagement

I wanted to share some barriers to sport and engagement which, perhaps, is overlooked by trainers, coaches or Teachers.

Bras

It was mentioned that 80% of female athletes had poorly fitting bras. Furthermore, ahead of the Tokyo Games 72% had reported pain in training as a result. A poorly fitting bra can have significant effect on performance by up to 4% which is large at the elite level, where margins are thin. On the engagement side it was said that 33% of women with a cup size of D or above say they don’t exercise because of their breast size

Pelvic floor

It is common knowledge that pelvic floor issues affect older and post-natal women. However this is not the only category of women it affects, it also affects athletes. Leaking urine during training and competition as a result of pelvic floor issues (even in women who have not had babies) is quite common in high impact sports such as trampoline, sprinting or basketball. Pelvic floor dysfunction is an understandable barrier to sport. Positively, this can be rectified by including gym based pelvic floor exercise.

Steps we could take to support female athletes better

I wanted to share some ideas in how we could support our female athletes better, this is not an exhaustive or very descriptive list however I wanted to create some discussion and more awareness around this area.

Education

With such a large amount coaches and females themselves not knowing their own bodies, the first stage is education. However, educating is nothing if we do not create a safe space for female athletes to speak out and share what they are going through.

Monitoring the menstrual cycle

There are many apps out there including Clue, Flo and Eve. Although collecting this data is sensitive it would be great if we got to a stage where we had this information on the female athletes we worked with and tailored workouts accordingly in every club or academy. For example, focusing on strength and reducing the volume in speed and plyometric training during certain stages of the menstrual cycle.

Environment

As alluded to in the first paragraph, creating a safe space also means creating an environment where there is no scarcity in items such as sanitary towels or menstrual cups as an example. If this is evident in academies then I believe this will positively add to female athletes being comfortable enough to share their feelings.

Training

I will not go into this in too much depth as there is a lot of great work out there. Conditioning programs will have to address the areas of proprioception, muscle imbalance and strength to serve the needs of the female athlete better. It may be, that we spend longer in phases that address these qualities and spend more time to focus on things like landing mechanics and single leg squatting.

“Check, Challenge, Change”

Thanks for reading guys,

Konrad McKenzie

Strength and Conditioning coach.

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