Few sports are played in one direction. How fast you can change direction and move in multiple directions is often the different maker. In May our site theme was changing direction and agility. We put together 1 new video, 2 podcasts, and 9 articles from 12 contributors exploring how athletes change direction, how to train for that, and more.
Frans Bosch has made coaches rethink how how we approach strength and conditioning. Rather than thinking just about muscles and strength, strength and conditioning can be use to enhance motor learning and coordination. His new book on agility comes out in June and we had the chance to sit down with him to discuss the topic. We cover the role of perception in agility, intrinsic learning through sport, groups of attractors, strategies to strengthen cocontractions, and the role of classical strength training.
If you want to learn about skill acquisition, Rob Gray is your guy. His day job is as Associate Professor of Human Systems Engineering at Arizona State University, with a focus on researching perceptual-motor control in sports, driving, and aviation. But in addition, his passion is spreading that knowledge outside of academia. His Perception & Action Podcast is on my favorites list and helps translate the latest research in the field easy to digest nuggets of wisdom that coaches can use in training.
Yesterday we posted the first part of an interview with Frans Bosch in anticipation of his new book coming out next week: Anatomy of Agility: Movement Analysis in Sport (available for preorder in the HMMR Store). In that part we looked at role of perception in agility, how to eliminate errors, developing independent athletes, and quantifying progress. Below we continue to the conversation by taking a look at a few different topics: attractors of agility, connecting training to context, and how this impacts other general training concepts.
Agree with his methods or not, few coaches have forced us to rethink how we prepare athletes as Frans Bosch has over the last five years. The publication of Strength Training and Coordination: An Integrative Approach started a conversation about how motor learning concepts can be brought into the weight room.
Many talent identification programs are based primarily on testing, but when we look at what has worked best historically, one-off testing has consistently shown itself to be insufficient. On this week’s podcast, talent development expert Paula Jardine takes a historic look at talent identification and shares some best practices on what works to develop champions.
Underdogs come and go, but Gonzaga University’s basketball team keeps coming back. The small school team is the perennial overachiever and strength coach Travis Knight has been there the whole time. He joins this week’s podcast to discuss the unique team culture and process that helps them keep up with their bigger budget competitors, as well as his approach to training agility for one of the most demanding sports out there.
Elite athletes use all zones of intensity, but what makes them elite is knowing what each zone can be used for and what doses to use it in. Stephen Seiler has been at the forefront of analyzing how elite athletes train. He joins this week’s GAINcast to discuss successful training strategies for elite athletes.
Snow sports run the gamut from acrobatic jumping and high speed downhill, to long distance endurance. Tschana Schiller has supported them all in more than a decade with US Ski and Snowboard. Athletes face unique demands on the snow, and she looks to find the best ways to support them off the snow. She joins us on this week’s episode to talk about the demands of snow sports, with a deeper look at cross-country skiing and supporting athletes remotely through velocity-based training.
As with any area of training, when it comes to training the legs we often fall back to our same training routines and exercises. That’s a shame since it is one of the most fundamental aspects of training. We wanted to help coaches get out of that rut this month by exploring some different ways to train the legs. Through the month we published 12 new articles, 2 new videos, and 1 new podcast on the topic from a 9 different contributors.
