Tag Archive for: Anatoli Bondarchuk

HMMR Podcast Episode 291: What’s your engine? (with Nathan Ott)

Every coach aims for technical improvement, but few have a clear method for achieving it. Throwing coach Nathan Ott has a clear process. It starts with defining the key engine an athlete uses to move, creating a plan together with the athlete, and maintaining focus and accountability. He joins us on this week’s episode to discuss how he views technical development, its interaction with physical preparation, and examples from world champion Brooke Andersen.

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Replacing prediction models with learning models


We often think about periodization and planning as a process of prediction. The longer I coach, the more I see we need to reframe periodization as a process of learning. The best coaches implement planning methods that allow them to learn. It took me too long to realize this distinction, but the sooner as coaches understand it, the sooner they can take their athletes to the next level.

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Embracing the riddle of movement

Go to your typical track meet and I bet you can identify which throwers are coached by which coach. Maybe it is a signature start, or how they move across the ring. They have a technical model and they’ve applied that successfully to their athletes. That is the sign of a good coach, right?

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Remembering Yuriy Sedykh

World hammer throw record holder Yuriy Sedykh passed away on Tuesday. When you think of Sedykh there is Sedykh the thrower and Sedykh the man. I’m not going to pretend I knew Sedykh the man very well. I met him a handful of times at clinics, but never had an in depth conversation with him. Nevertheless, like every hammer thrower in the world, I intimately knew Sedykh the thrower. Looking around social media for the past few days it is amazing to see all the memories of throwers like me. They met him a few times, but he changed their lives. Below are a few thoughts on Sedykh the thrower.

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HMMR Podcast Episode 248: Throwing the ball around (with Zach Dechant)

Baseball and the throwing events have a lot in common: in both sports you are trying to generate rotational power to move an implement fast. When it comes to training, there a lot of parallels as well. Zach Dechant is the strength coach for one of the top collegiate baseball programs. He joins this week’s podcast to discuss how he focuses on specific strength in training, including player profiling, exercise design, and many aspects of medicine ball training.

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HMMR Podcast Episode 241: The mailbag (with Grant Cartwright)

It’s time to open the listener mailbag again. A few times a year we solicit listener questions and take them on air. This time, the format is a little different. Recently we’ve been getting a lot of great questions from Boston University’s Grant Cartwright. So we invited him on to help us answer some questions, ask a few of his own, and talk about the major influences on his coaching.

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GAINcast Episode 208: The cumulative training effect

We often think about the stimulus of key sessions or training phases. But more often than not adaptations come from the accumulation of training over the long-term. On this week’s episode we look at the cumulative training effect, the role of small doses of training stimulus, and how to connect sessions together to enhance the cumulative effect.

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HMMR Podcast Episode 202: Beyond intensity (with Stuart McMillan)

High intensity training can have a massive training effect, but at a certain point intensity alone is not what drives adaptation. You have to be more creative. Stuart McMillan has confronted this issue first hand in working with post-collegiate sprinters at Altis and joins the podcast this week to discuss how he searches for adaptation and his thoughts on many more topics. Read more

GAINcast Episode 146: Microdosing training

Microdosing has become a buzz word over the last year in training circles, but it isn’t a new concept. Small but frequent units of training can add up to provide significant value to athletic development. On this episode of the GAINcast we discuss the concept of microdosing, how it looks like in practice, and how to progress microdosing over the season. Read more

What exercise classification can and can’t do for your training

You can classify exercises in a number of ways: on a scale of specificity, by the plane of movement, by degrees of freedom, by the speed of movement, or through various other methods. One approach is that of Anatoli Bondarchuk, who we have covered many times on our podcast and in our webinar on his training methods, which divides exercises into four categories based on his definition of specificity. In talking with coaches over the past few years, his method provides a simple tool that coaches in any spot can implement. But let’s be clear, it also has it’s limitations, like any method of exercise classification. Exercise classification is the start of a process, not the solution itself. There are certain things that exercise classification can and cannot do. Read more