Beyond the Bullsh*t

One of the biggest influences on my approach to training over the past year has been John Kiely, the Irish strength and conditioning coach and university lecturer in elite performance. I had the chance to interview him last year and it was the most open and honset interview I have done. As an academic Kiely has written about the unique situation we find ourselves in as coaches: science tells us that the human body is an increasingly complex organism, yet science is unable to tell us much about what is the best method for planning and periodization. As a practioner, Kiely provides some simple solutions that can bring about big changes in training. The ability to both tell it like it is, and be helpful is unique in our sport and made me want to learn more from him.

Well now I have the chance. Next month John and I will co-host a seminar on training at the University of Limerick in Ireland. More details and registration information can be found here, including a discount for early registration. I like to put together seminars that I can also learn from and would enjoy attending. Looking at the list of topics we will cover, I couldn’t be more excited to host this event:

• Evolution to Revolution: A History of Periodisation – A look at the history of training to learn why we do what we do, as well as a critical analysis of current trends in periodisation including block periodisation, complex periodisation, tactical periodisation, and Bondarhcuk.
• Planning for Performance: The Inconvenient Truth(s) – How the complex nature of human biology, the psycho-emotional dimensions of physiological adaptation, and cognitive bias affect our training.
• Coping with Uncertainty: Simple solutions to complex problems – Ideas on how to solve the issues presented in the previous session.
• From Theory to Practice: Lessons from Master Coaches – Case studies of how fundamental training principles like balance, feedback/testing, simplicity/efficiency are put into practice by some of the worlds top coaches and what we can learn from these examples.
• 21st Century Periodisation: Plans, Processes and Mindset’s for an updated reality – a collection of ideas and directions for evolving how we think about training planning, and how we can practically implement these innovations to our improve training processes.

I have plenty of resources about my own approach on this site, so you might have an idea of how I would approach these topics. To learn more about John’s approach I would recommend starting with our training talk from last year (now temporarily available for free for non-members) as well as his archive of articles. He recently also did two in-depth interviews with the Pacey Performance podcast which you can listen to below. All are must listens and just the tip of the iceberg concerning what we will cover.

→ Register now: see the complete agenda and receive a discount if you register early.