Our mailbag is full, so it’s time to go through some listener questions about a variety of topics. On this week’s episode we dive into questions on the planning for truncated seasons, recovery, teaching the Olympic lifts, rest periods in circuit training, who do we want to grab a beer with, and more.
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It’s now been a year since the pandemic started and lockdowns started around the world. The impact has been massive for everyone. And while I think we all wish we didn’t have to go through the experience, there is a thing or two we can learn from the past year.
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The GAIN Master Class Series has been going strong the last six months and we want to give you a taste of what it’s about. Our latest event last week looked at reconsidering periodization, including a top panel discussion with leading practitioners. On this week’s episode of the GAINcast, we share highlights from the panel discussion, as well as an interview with Professor Keith Baar, our next Master Class presenter. Read more
When it comes to training, competing, and life all exert a significant amount of load on the athlete, through a variety of different mediums, including the physiological and psychological. In this article of the performance health series, I’ll explore what we can do to support our recovery from load. Read more
Every month we take a deep dive into the latest research in sports science. In the June edition we take a deep dive into several articles on building mental toughness and resilience in training. Mental toughness is a term that is thrown around a lot, but without many coaches knowing exactly what it is or how to train it. We then look at the importance of individualized recovery, and how coaches commonly monitor athletes. Read more
I have identified a new syndrome – the over-recovered athlete. I look at the landscape and I see athletes and teams spending as much or more time doing ice baths, cryotherapy massage etc. as they do in actual training. Rest and recovery are fine and necessary but only of benefit if you first do the necessary work. Read more
Every month we take a deep dive into the latest research in sports science. In the June Sports Science Monthly we start off by looking at new research on how parents can affect athlete development. We then give you the latest updates on how hormones change while recovering from exercise, mental health, collagen and tendon pain, functional movement screening, and more. 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
In the May edition of Sports Science Monthly we look at new research across a variety of areas including the latest research on caffeine, how genetics impact caffeine, pre-exercise stretching, recovery, muscular strength, and more. Read more
If it’s possible to have a favorite gene, mine is ACTN3, often referred to as the speed gene. But to me it is interesting for more reasons than speed; after all top sprinters have been found to have different variants of the the gene. What is most interesting about it is that it impacts muscle function and architecture. As a result, this one gene can have a large impact on exercise adaptation, post-exercise recovery, and injury risk. Read more
