Top high school sprint coach Joe McNab has been producing some of the country’s best sprinters and relays for decades at Notre Dame High School. With beginners the process has to be simple and on this episode he walks us through his core speed principles, how he built a culture of speed, and his experience working with field sports. Read more
Knowing about speed is one thing, but teaching it is something else. This is where the art of coaching comes into play. On this week’s episode Vern walks us through what he would do on the first day of speed training with a new group of athletes. It’s a great look into the mind of a coach to see how they put together their session and why. Read more
Ready made programs have proliferated in the internet era. With a simple search coaches can find hundreds of programs they can take off the shelf and use with their athletes. On this week’s episode Nick and Martin talk about some of the pros and cons of using ready made programs and what are some of the best ones out there. In addition, they discuss adapting plyometrics to training and building a strength reserve. Read more
Focusing on the two hours a day an athlete trains misses out on the vast majority of what is going on in an athletes life. The other 22 hours a day in many cases are more important. Lifestyle can have both positive and negative effects on performance and to reach the top you truly need to be a 24-hour athlete. On this week’s episode Vern talks about how lifestyle can affect performance both positively and negatively. Read more
The nutrition world is so filled with gurus and pseudo science that it can be difficult to separate the truth from fiction. Olympian and HMMR Media sports science correspondent Craig Pickering joins this week’s episode to give us an update on the latest research and insights from the world of nutrition and what that means to us as athletes. Read more
Nick recently went through the process of remodeling and expanding his school’s weight room and he learned some valuable lessons on getting the most out of your equipment in managing the project. In this episode we discuss the most essential equipment for training, getting the best bang for your buck, and how facility layout can make your equipment useful or useless. Read more
Learning to move is a lot like learning to read and write: you cannot write a novel without first learning the ABCs and how to string them together into words, sentences, and paragraphs. On this week’s episode Vern discusses physical literacy and how it fits into athletic development. Read more
Every week we discuss a variety of strength and conditioning topics on the podcast, but being a good coach is as much about experience as anything we will chat about. As coaches we need to jump in situations that might leave us exposed, but in the exposure we gain experience. On this week’s podcast we talk about gaining experience, setting up your own system and how much time is really needed to put together a training plan. Read more
Baseball is a sport that oscillates between tradition and modern analytics. Coaches like Paul Davis of the St. Louis Cardinals try to find a balance in the middle. As a developmental pitching coordinator and coach he has to understand the science of movement and the art of coaching. On this episode Davis joins us to walk through his approach to developing pitchers as athletes. Read more
Two weeks ago Vern and I got the opportunity to present at the Scottish Athletics annual coaching conference. At the end of the seminar we got that chance to pose some questions to all the presenters at a roundtable session. We recorded that discussion and present it as this week’s episode. Read more
