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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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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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
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
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
In many ways, track and field coaches have it easy. When I am coaching a hammer thrower, for example, I have just one athlete to worry about, one movement to train for, and one technique to master. Athletes in open-skilled sports, on the other hand, have a much more difficult puzzle to put together. How do coaches decide what to focus on in training and programming in such a situation? Read more
For podcast addicts, a new episode of the HMMR Podcast and GAINcast each week might not be enough. If that’s the case for you, we have a temporary cure this week as I was a guest on the Central Virginia Sport Performance Podcast with Jay DeMayo. Read more
There is something to be said about trial by fire. If you throw a coach into a difficult situation, they will learn fast no matter whether they are succesful or not. This describes the career of Chris McCormick, who has just started as the Head Strength & Conditioning Coach for Olympic Sports at Florida Atlantic University. Long before he was at FAU, he was a 23 year old coach running a one-man shop and hundreds of athletes at a Division II school. As he’s gained experience over the years, he’s learned along the way. He joins us on the podcast to talk about dealing with such situations, the logistics of running a strength and conditioning program, and setting up a training program. Read more
You can’t just learn a new training method from reading a book. You have to live it, you have to experiment with it, and you have to understand all the different parts. Derek Evely has spent his career studying the top training methods in sport, and there is one method he keeps coming back to: Bondarchuk. He’s working on an upcoming course to help coaches look under the hood and learn from his trials and failures. On this week’s podcast he joins us to dig deep into two concepts: exercise classification and rest phases. Read more
We’re proud to announce our next seminar tailored specifically to training for the throwing events. On June 16th Nick Garcia and I will be presenting at Rice University in Houston. Through both classroom instruction and demonstrations, we’ll show you various ways to program for the heavy throws, share our training plans, walk participants through key exercises and progressions, and more. It willl be a great opportunity to learn and see first hand how to put a program together in a variety of ways. Read more
