I despise so called “coaches” who willingly take risks with their athletes health in order to chase glory for either their own or the athlete’s ego.

One case this past week of a female fighter being made to lose 1 1/2 stone in the 4 weeks before a fight so that she can fight a weight-class below in order to go for a “title”.

How was this achieved? Running in cling-film and borderline starvation.

The result? A lost fight and a mentally and physically damaged fighter.

There’s a good chance her menstrual cycle will be damaged – a concern for any woman dropping to single digit body-fat levels in such a quick-fix, bullshit way.

I don’t know what angers me more the fact it happened, or that it happened via an experienced coach who I had in high esteem because of their experience.

If the fighter has to cut that much weight just prior to a fight either they are in the wrong weight class (as in this case) or they need to re-assess their nutrition the other 11 months of the year.

I would like to say this is isolated, but a similar thing occurred recently when BJ Benn had to cut weight at short notice at UFC:112 to fight Frankie Edgar. In this case I think it was more about bad nutrition the rest of the year.

That’s my rant over…for now.

Another great day at Exeter University’s Streatham Sports Centre.

Working again with the brilliant team of S & C coach James Marshall and Physiotherapist Dave MacLellan.

Fitness and Performance Testing

We  had a great talk on sports testing from Bert at Exercise Science Consulting.

The aim was to not just tell the young athletes what tests are used, but more importantly why they are used and how they should digest the results.  As Bert said “A lot of athletes get tested into ground, but dont get told why its important to them and their performance”.

The main aim of testing is to help identify any areas of weakness an athlete has and help to monitor improvement in those areas.

I also learnt about some interesting new tests being used – the Yo-Yo test and the 505 agility test being the two that most caught my attention.

The process and aims of improving sporting performance are summised brilliantly by this quote from David Brailsford (the current British Cycling performance director)

“The ongoing pursuit of the aggregation of marginal gains and improvements”

Bert also mentioned that there is some exciting new research being carried out into eye tracking in sports and how eye movement can affect performance.

Physio Assessments

In the afternoon we conducted some more postural and movement assessments with athletes on an individual basis. Again, I was amazed as ever at the amount of young athletes who are great at their sport and yet struggle to sit into a chair without falling into it!

We had one very interesting case of a young female hockey player who had developed a slight lumber scoliosis, due to her back muscles having become over developed on one side – a common problem in one side dominant sports.

The case that I was most concerned about, however, involved a talented multi-sport female athlete who had a persistant history of lower back and leg injuries.

Her and  her mum had thrown everything they could in terms of time and money at the problem. They had seen at least 4 different physios, one specialist and even were making regular trips to London in the attempt to rectify the problem.

Two things struck me about the situation. Firstly just how determined and supportive the family had been, ensuring that they would exhaust every single avenue in their quest to rectify the issues. Secondly, just how frustrated they were, that despite all their efforts they had not managed to rectify the underlying issues.

Some of the issues we identified during the interview and assessment were:

• Playing 3, 4 or even more competitive games a week – sometimes whole weekends on squad selection camps!
• Poor standing posture – anterior pelvic tilt and a slight twist towards the left side
• Zero common sense and true coaching skill from her coaches and PE instructors at school, none of whom were looking at the bigger picture as to the amount of training and competitive games she was having back-to-back.
• Being instructed to do heavy bar-bell movements – including power cleans! – with her bad posture and one-sided muscular dominance.

This very much was a case of a talented young athlete, who through sheer grit and determination, was succeeding despite being subjected to awful coaching and mentoring.

I look forward to seeing how Dave and James work together to improve her situation and get her on the road to being a happy and healthy athlete for years to come.

Video and Photos

As some of the athletes were under the age of sixteen – we thought it best not to risk getting into trouble by taking footage without prior consent from the parents and guardians.

Hopefully I can arrange a couple of interviews at the next camp with James, Dave and hopefully Paula who runs the project to help explain just how good and important this project is.

Filmed a brand new video today on using Foam Rolling to facilitate Self-Myofascial Release in the connective, fascial tissue that surrounds muscles.

I think foam rolls are a great, simple, cheap and effective tool to aid with body-management and mainting a robust foundation for everyday movement.

One of the worst areas I find in most clients and athletes is the TFL/IT band area at the side of the thigh – if you’ve ever tried it you’ll know exactly what I mean!

I’ve just come back from a fantastic day at Exeter University.

I went with James Marshall, of Excelsior Training, to help him run a support day for gifted athletes from all over South Devon.

We spent the morning running through warm-ups, circuit training and agility exercises suitable for all athletes to help improve their abilities and reduce their chances of injury.

In the afternoon we sat down with the resident physio Dave MacLellan and the athletes individually, taking them through a musculoskeletal assessment to screen out any possible problems and impairments.

It was a great chance for me to learn first hand how James and Dave assess posture and movement efficiency in athletes.

The most inspiring point of the day was watching how, during the assessments, James and Dave would almost pre-empt one-another as they picked out various compensations. It showed that they had a real synergy between them and I think its a great thing to have the strength and conditioning coach there first-hand to witness everything that the Physiotherapist does, rather than simply relying on written reports.

Things I learnt over the course of the day:

• Young female athletes are generally more flexible than their male counterparts.
• Nearly all young athletes lack a solid and robust foundation for everyday movement, let alone anything sports specific.
• Lower back problems seem to be worryingly common among young athletes of both sexes and nearly always is caused by bad posture, inflexibility in the spine and being coached into the ground when they do have a problem.
• Some equestrian riders seem be more agile than a lot of athletes who play team sports, such as Rugby and Football, even though it is not as important to them as it is the team sport players.  Makes you question what the team sports’ coaches are actually doing when they train their athletes.
• A great synergy between coaches and therapists produces the best results by far.
• The young athletes who we worked with had either zero or next to no appreciation of the quality of the services, knowledge and skill that was being made available to them – for free!

Overall a great day and I thank James and Dave for allowing me to help out, watch and most importantly learn from their wisdom.

Today’s post is about legendary Strength coach Joe DeFranco.

Joe is famed for his balls-to-the-wall training and for getting serious results with the athletes he works with.

Joe’s training philosophy is based around the maxim “No gimmicks, just hard work”

He has successfully combined elements of power-lifting training (West-side Barbell methods), traditional strength training, functional training, agility training, corrective exercise and athletic conditioning to produce complete programs to bring out the best in those he trains.

One of the key elements to every workout is the element of competition, which helps to drive his athletes to work consistently hard in the gym.

I will be using one of his programs as the basis for my next training block, with the aim of improving strength in the key movements of the bench press, pull-up and squat. So I am looking forward to some hard work, tough workouts and great results.

You can find out more about Joe at his website: www.defrancostraining.com and at his YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/user/joedefranco

In the meantime, here is a video of some of his work:

Adding a link to the blog of a renowned strength and conditioning coach called Robert dos Remedios, or coach ‘Dos’ as he is affectionately known.

Coach Dos has been training athletes for over 20 years as was recently featured in an article in the UKSCA journal.

Famed for his tough, no-nonsense and passionate approach – Coach Dos has created a solid reputation amongst other S & C coaches.

Dos’ principles for building training programmes:

• Cover the major movement patterns
• Learn to deal with your own bodyweight
• Use unilateral exercises and work laterally
• Maximise effciency by using supersets, complexes and compound movements
• Keep the sessions short and sweet.

Here’s a link to his site.

A bit late, but Merry Christmas to all!

I’ve had a busy few weeks both at work and at home with the Christmas period – but thankfully I’ve managed to grab some time to get my next video up!

Its a bit more on Corrective Exercise – looking specifically at shoulder impingement.

Massive thank you to James Doolan – who once again provided the ‘test subject’ for the assessment.

Shoulder Impairment Video:

More videos and updates to come in the New Year.  So until, then I wish you all a fantastic 2010!

Again a day early, but I’ve got a busy day tomorrow so what the hell…

Today’s is one of THE BEST quotes I have ever come across, and I have heard and read hundreds.

“The more complex the situation, the more
threatening my rivals, the more I spread my wings in defiance of everything.”

It come from the great Russian Olympic lifter Vasiliy Ivanovich Alekseyev.

Alekseyev is an all time legend in the realms of weightlifting and possesed a burning desire to win.

He set 80 world records as a super heavyweight weightlifter and invented some unsual training methods along the way.

You can read more about him in this interview on elitefts.com

Here’s a video of the legend in action:

Thanks to James Marshall from Excelsior for the links.

Finally have my head around editing in Adobe and posting videos to YouTube so that they are in glorious HD.

Here’s the introducton to corrective exercise video in full resolution:

More videos to come soon, some topics I plan on covering are nutrition, strength and conditioning for football (soccer), training reccomendations and specialist strength routines.

Bri.

I wanted to post something up about this extraordinary man.

For those who don’t know, Mr. Poliquin is a legendary strength coach based in the US. He has coached a vast array of top athletes to their best results and he writes some great, no-nonsense articles on the subject.

I wanted to share two of my current favourites:

Learning From Exercise Bloopers

The “Functional” Training Delusion

I like his approach to training – keeping it simple by using what works and treating each athlete as an individual. I think if those two principles were adopted by every strength coach/trainer, then the world would be a better place for it.

Bri.