In case you aren’t tired of hearing me on the HMMR Podcast and the GAINcast every week, here’s one more podcast for you to listen to. Last week I was also a guest on the Strength Chat podcast by Kabuki Strength. Read more
Earlier this month I wrote that transfer is not as straightforward as it seems, even with something as simple as linear speed. In response, some coaches, such as rugby coach John Pryor, have rethought their approach to training speed and strength. Pryor is currently the head of strength and conditioning for Fiji in the lead-up to next year’s World Cup. We’ve written several times about his approach to training speed, and he’ll cover the topic again at GAIN 2018 in June, but a few weeks ago I had a chance to talk to him about the process that got him there. Read more
You’ve likely heard of the importance of athletes being exposed to a variety of different sports in order to increase their chances of success in their main sport. It’s widely reported that high level athletes tend to a have a multi-sport background, with 71% of NCAA Division 1 American Football players, and 90% of Division 1 runners being multi-sport athletes. A big news story in 2017 was that 30 of the 32 NFL first round draft picks were multiple sport athletes in high school. It appears that the correlation here is clear; being a multi-sport athlete in your youth increases your chances of success. But does it? Read more
If you ever take a statistics course, one of the first things you will learn is that correlation does not imply causation. It is one of the main tenants of science and if you wonder why that is the case, just think through some examples like the perfect correlation between ice cream sales and shark attacks per month, or other great examples from the Spurious Correlations website. Simply put, just because two things coincide, doesn’t mean that one caused the other and, even if there is a causal link, which direction it is heading. Read more
In a complex sport like judo, it can be hard to define what type of strength training will transfer onto the mat. A former fighter himself, Allan Macdonald is now the lead strength and conditioning coach for British Judo where he is tasked with that exact task. On this week’s podcast he discusses the complexity of and search for transfer, the role of specific strength in judo training, and examples of exercise design and progression. Read more
This month’s theme on HMMR Media is transfer of training, and to kick it off I thought I would take a timely example of just how complex transfer can be. What you think has carry over to your sport is not always as simple as it seems. Read more
Finding transfer can be a difficult task in field sports, where “performance” is a difficult concept to quantify. But just because it may be difficult to find doesn’t mean the search is fruitless. Mark Bennett joins English Rugby this summer as the head of sports science. He joins the podcast this week to discuss where his search for transfer has taken him over the course of his career as a player, coach, and sports scientist. Read more
A question that comes up nearly every time I present on specific strength exercises is whether such work in the weight room is really necessary for team sports. Athletes from these sports spend large quantities of time on the field and little time training off of it. As a result many strength coaches feel a need to balance out their training and focus only on general exercises once the athletes enter the weight room. I must admit, it is a great question. In fact, I’ve been pondering it for a few months now. Read more
Earlier this week we posted the first part in an interview with Frans Bosch. In it, we discussed chasing perfection, and the role of variation and attractors in motor learning. You can read the interview here. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. We continued the conversation to talk about some topics that are central to what I often write about: transfer, specificity, and transfer. In addition we ask him where his focus is heading forward. Read more
Olympic weightlifting is a great tool to develop explosive power, but is it the best tool? Top weightlifting coach Matt Foreman joins the podcast this week to discuss the use of Olympic weightlifting in training for other sports, and shares some secrets about the art of coaching learned from a career in the sport. Read more
