RFD – Run Faster and Jump Higher
Sports like netball, hockey, lacrosse, football, and rugby, to name a few, have very specific technical sport skills, and with the aid of the sports coach, can be practiced, trained, and developed. From a fundamental point of view these specific technical sport skills require a range of physical capacities and skills. For example, throwing a […]
Strength Training: The Female Athlete
It is well known that strength training stimulates a series of adaptations, that will aid both male and female athletes, for example, increase in rate force production (RFD) (Aagaard et al. 2002), RFD is linked and correlated with many athletic movements, jumping, cutting, and sprinting. Neural and neuromuscular changes (Marshall et al. 2011), and movement […]
Knee Injuries and ACL Risks. What Can We do to Keep Our Players Healthy and Playing their Sport?
In the blog Netball – The importance of Physical Preparation, I stated that a Long-term Athlete Development Programme (LTAD) comprises of: Additionally, within the strength and conditioning spectrum, I highlighted three main aims or objectives. 1) prepare the player for the sporting demands, 2) identify and minimise injury risks, 3) develop physical capacities which may transfer […]
Netball – The Importance of Physical Preparation
Netball is a dynamic sport, which requires the players to be able to repeatedly jump, hop, leap, sprint and to change direction (Comfort & Jones, 2017), with the latter often referred to as cutting. Collectively, these physical attributes are known as the Sporting Demands, and as a netball coach, it is essential that we review […]
ARE THE INCLUSION OF BODYWEIGHT EXERCISES A VALID PROTOCOL FOR DEVELOPING STRENGTH IN ELITE YOUTH ATHLETES?
This article will investigate and explore bodyweight (BW) training as a strength protocol for young elite athletes and provide evidence based, practical recommendations for young athletes starting a youth strength and conditioning (YS&C) programme in conjunction with a long-term athletic development (LTAD) framework. Firstly, this article is not about health or the health-related benefits of […]
CRITICAL REVIEW OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION. PRIMARY TO SECONDARY SCHOOL IN THE UK: IS IT TIME FOR A NEW APPROACH?
The media is constantly stating that children and young people are becoming less active, unhealthy and generally sedentary (Guthold et al. 2010, Pate et al. 2011, Prentice, 2006). Furthermore, the World Health Organisation (WHO) frequently release global figures that reflect this statement, plus, the rate of overweight and obesity in children and young people are […]
What we need, is speed!
As we currently don’t have access to gyms or training facilities, there have been many questions asked around what should athletes be doing to ensure they stay at pre lockdown levels? One option, which doesn’t require a gym, is to practice sprints. Ever heard the old adage “speed kills”? If you have ever played full back against […]
Recovery
Yes, that’s right, this is yet another blog on how to recover from exercise however, it might not be quite what you think… Firstly, a recap on training and the process of training. Training causes a ‘stress’ on the system as a whole, and possibly specific stress on subsystems (a subsystem could be a muscle […]
The Three Pillars of development at Advance
Ever since we started training our first athletes over six years ago, our philosophy has been built on an athlete-centered approach. To envision the Advance Lab philosophy further, we created 3 pillars, Prepare, Progress and Perform, which are also the foundations of a Long-term athlete development (LTAD) programme. Training young athletes is really a learning and […]
Abs and Core – I think you mean strength training?!
After a recent blog regarding body weight training (which ruffled a few feathers), people have been in touch to ask, ‘what about sit ups, planks and other bodyweight exercises to train your core?’ ‘core stability is important isn’t it?’ First of all, make yourself a coffee, sit down, belt up, and turn off your phone, as this […]
