As politics has become more polarized around the world, that mindset has spilled over into the training world. Mention abortion, immigration, or affirmative action and you’ll have to dig your heals in for an intense debate with no middle ground. In the training world, for some reason, topics like speed ladders have become similar hot button issues.
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The training camp is an integral part of the training process in many sports. But how can you get the most out of it? On this week’s GAINcast we share ideas around planning training camps to get the most out of them with swim coach Chris Webb. In addition, we look at optimal planning of multiple short training sessions, strategies to increase training quality, how much warmup is needed, and more.
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Perhaps the two most important words in programming are: it depends. We often focus on the exercise or structure, forgetting about the context. How do you train before a competition? It depends. Are speed ladders good or bad? It depends. Are kettlebells or dumbbells better? It depends. On this week’s episode we talk about variety of training topics and try to answer the question of what it depends on.
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Warm-up and cooldown are essential parts of the whole training process. It is helpful to think of the warm-up as preparation for training and cooldown as a reset to prepare the body for the next training sessions. The workout begins with the warm-up! The subsequent training sessions do not actually begin with that sessions warm-up rather it begins with prior sessions cooldown. Conceptually this is based on the unity of training sessions and that no workout stands alone.
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When it comes to contact sport, body armor is a hot topic. This makes sense: armor protects you. But there is a problem as well: in the world of physical preparation armor is shorthand for size. In the real world that is hardly the case. The best combat armor is not the biggest. There is a reason modern soldiers don’t go onto the battlefield dressed as a medieval knight. To be effective armor has to be strong. It needs to allow movement. It needs to protect the most vulnerable parts. It needs to connect to the body. Size is the least concern in most cases.
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Tackling sports are dynamic and chaotic. Athletes end up bent and folded in seemingly unpredictable ways. Fortunately, the situations occur in recognizable patterns, and these repeating patterns can give us clues on how to best warm-up and prepare. The collisions and grappling requires a wide range of flexibility and mobility. If an athlete can not move into and out of these tight and jumbled postures, they will avoid them, they will not have the necessary awareness to see them, or they will be injured when they are forced into them. A well designed training program can prepare athletes for these collision positions.
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Every month we take a deep dive into the latest research in sports science. In this month’s edition we look at how elite sprinters warm up, the data on whether periodization works in the real world, tactical behaviors in middle distance running, performance intelligence, and more.
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Many athletes pick up weightlifting as a hobby after retiring from their primary sport. After years of training without proper technique, transitioning to a new sport often requires a step back to relearn technique. That’s exactly what we’ve been struggling with lately. On this week’s episode Wil Fleming joins us to break down our own technique, and shares some ideas on submaximal lifting, variations, complexes, warming up, meet preparation, and much more.
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Tennis is the sport I have been involved in my whole life as an athlete, a teacher, a coach and now on the athletic development and performance side of the sport. Throughout the journey, the medicine ball has played a crucial role and has evolved into an almost daily part of our program both on court and in the gym.
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The term medicine ball was coined by Robert J. Roberts in 1876. He had been inspired by one of the stories in Arabian Nights where an Eastern Potentate was advised by his physician to toss a large, soft ball of herbs a certain number of times a day until ‘he did sweat.’ Movement was being recommended as medicine back in ancient times. Roberts made a ball weighing 7-8lbs and sewn like a baseball. He then recommended a series of exercises in his work with the Y.M.C.A. that included lifting, circling and throwing the medicine ball.
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