Coaching Young Athletes – Forget the detailed programs and coach the PERSON in front of you.

It is more and more common to see many youth athletes pass through the doors of gyms in attempt to become more athletic, usually, to improve sporting performance for their chosen sport. Thankfully the old myths about weight training stunting growth have been disproved and more parents understand the benefits of S&C for their children, I know at Focus we now have a number of promising young athletes on a daily basis.

Coaching an athlete at an early age whether as their strength & conditioning coach or as their actual sports coach holds massive responsibility. At a young age you can literally raise the ceiling of an athlete’s potential or severely hinder their chances of becoming elite by instilling poor movement or even worse by making them resent training.

Whilst I am not the authority on Youth Athlete Strength & Conditioning, I am observing (through social media) a lot of mistakes I feel that are being made in the area and wish to make suggestions of what should take priority when training youth athletes.

1. Strength Testing for Youth athletes is essentially pointless – I see lots of gyms that strength test their young athletes. However, young athletes will naturally get stronger as they grow and go through adolescence. Testing athletes and posting their new 1RMs as if you’re the best coach in the world is ego driven rather than the best thing for the young person your coaching. A 14 year olds bench press will more than likely increase in the space of 6 months even if they had performed no training simply due to them growing.
2. Coaching should be done in person, not on spreadsheets –  Youth athletes even more so than senior athletes have to manage their training loads efficiently. Coaches have to be prepared to change sessions at the last-minute and be flexible with programming to adjust to the young athletes workload. Stress of school, exams, sports and relationships can all affect young athletes and adding huge physical stress on top of that is not beneficial. Having the best programs laid out on excel spreadsheets or PDFs may help sell your services to the parents but you owe it to the young athlete to work with them not have them work for you.
3. Get to know the young person you are coaching – You often hear the term ‘coachable’ being sued when talking about an athlete. Getting to know the person you are coaching is the quickest way of them to become coachable, You find out what makes them tick and incorporate that in sessions so they want to come back and put in the work.
4. MOVEMENT, MOVEMENT, MOVEMENT – It is much more important to coach good movement to young athletes than aim at making them super strong. They will develop strength as they grow and can always work on it but poor movement patterns are much harder to re-teach once they are an adult. Strength training is important to teach them to safely absorb force so by all means strength train your youth athletes but always reinforce good movement patterns, landing mechanics and speed mechanics.

To summarise coach the PERSON not the athlete. Remember they have more going on in their lives than your gym session. Be ready to adjust sessions and don’t live off spreadsheets. It may look great and be a good sell to their parents but all those numbers and charts are useless if poor movement is being taught or executed at a young age.

Importance of a structured Strength & Conditioning program for injury prevention in female athletes.

 

The most important priority of any strength & conditioning coach is to reduce the incidence of non-impact injuries in their athletes. This can be achieved through individual screening of each athlete as well as understanding the physical requirements of the sport. With this information the coach can then structure a program to improve mobility/stability in necessary joints as well as muscular strength and power.

Data has shown that there is a gender gap between female and male athletes when it comes to the incidence of non-impact joint injuries such as knee and ankle ligament injuries. (1,2,3,5) Non-impact injuries usually occur when landing, cutting, stopping or changing direction

A review of ACL injury prevention in female athletes (1) found females were 3.5 times more at risk of a non-contact ACL (anterior cruciate ligament in the knee joint) injury than male athletes. In a systematic review of ankle sprain injury (5) it was found that females were almost twice as likely as male athletes to suffer an ankle sprain.

There are a number of (non-conclusive theories) as to why females are at greater risk of such joint injuries and a number of these if not all may contribute to the higher risk:

• Higher estrogen levels and lower testosterone levels than males means females have less muscle mass to help absorb and dissipate forces during landing, decelerating, turning etc.
• Greater flexibility leads to looser ligaments and therefore less joint stability
• A wider pelvis alters the Q-angle (basically angle of outside of pelvis to centre of kneecap) which can affect rotation of the knee and the alignment of knee and ankle. Males tend to have a much smaller Q-angle meaning joints are in better alignment for landing etc.
• Landing mechanics – females tend to land more upright with more valgus stress on knee (inward rotation) than males meaning joints absorb a greater percentage of force than male counterparts.
• Nutrient deficiency – females generally have a lower calorie intake than males meaning they may not be ingesting as much calcium and vitamin D as male counter parts.

While none of these theories is the conclusive reason for a higher incidence of ACL and ankle sprain injuries is females they provide us with useful information we can use to structure a program for injury prevention.

Several studies have shown very successful reduction in incidence of non-impact injuries in female athletes following a structured strength & conditioning program (6,7,8). In one study (7) the control group who didn’t do the program had 3.6 times more non-impact injuries over the course of the season than the training group. In a review of 7 different studies that used neuromuscular training as an intervention it was concluded that a structured program reduced the risk of acute knee injuries and ankle sprains.(6)

Key components of these programs included:

• Flexibility
• Plyometrics
• Weight training
• Coaching correct landing mechanics
• Balance work

It is important that a needs analysis of the sport and an individual screen is carried out prior to beginning any strength & conditioning program. This will help ensure weak muscles are strengthened, appropiate joints are mobilised or stabilised and avoid overuse injuries.

 

References

1. ACL Injury prevention in female athletes: Review of the literature and practical considerations in implementing an ACL prevention program. (Voskanian et al, 2013)
2. The female ACL: why is it more prone to injury? (Ireland et al, 2002)
3. ACL Injury patterns among collegiate men and women. (Arendt et al, 1999)
4. Comparison of hamstring strain injury rates between male and female intercollegiate soccer athletes. (Cross et al, 2013)
5. The incidence and prevalence of ankle sprain injury: A systematic review and Meta-Analysis of prospective epidemiological studies. (Doherty et al, 2003)
6. Neuromuscular training for sports injury prevention: A systematic review. (Hubscher et al, 2010)
7. The effect of neuromuscular training on the incidence of knee injury in female athletes: A prospective study. (Hewett et al, 1999)
8. Prevention of ACL injuries in female handball: A prospective intervention study over 3 seasons. (Myklebust et al, 2003)

 

 

 

 

New Year Resolutions…for the fitness industry!

It’s the time of year when people are thinking about the changes they’re going to make in the New Year. Every gym and trainer on the earth is gearing up for big promotion work and getting bookings in place to help the new crop of potential members and clients. It seems that at this time of year we see a lot of pictures (like the one below) poking fun at the fact some people will stick to the gym for a few weeks then fade away again. 

I thought instead of a blog on “How to stick to your New Year Resolutions” I would instead offer some suggestions that the fitness industry on a whole could resolve to do in the New Year to provide a better service to everyone and not just hardcore members, athletes or physique competitors.  (Basically it’s a clever way for me to rant about the shit I hate in this industry)

1. Realise that we (the industry) are the reason people give up on their Resolutions very early! – We can blame members/clients all we want “They’re not dedicated” etc but if people give up early on their goals it’s our fault. Something we have done or haven’t done has made it easier for them to quit.
2. Provide realistic expectations for people – time to stop painting the picture of health as having six pack abs. People give up when they realise after 6 weeks of busting their backsides in the gym they still can’t see abs. They don’t think about the fact they may have done things that will improve their health and prolong their life and that’s because we, as an industry, only promote being shredded. People can train, eat some shit now and again, have a drink, have a family, friends and kids and still be healthy without being ripped. We need to show people that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing.
3. Stop recording people who don’t know what they are doin and show them how to do it- seriously! Wtf? So many videos by trainers around the world go viral when someone is using a machine wrong or doing a crazy looking exercise in the gym. Put your phone away and help them like you signed up to do when you decided to become a trainer. 
4. Understand that it’s what you can do for your client and not what they can do for you – too often trainers see their clients as promotion tools rather than people who have come to them for help. Dropping a client because they can’t stick to a program/diet you’ve given them and you don’t want their (lack of) results affecting your reputation. It’s your job to find what works for people so they can sustain their nutrition and training. If they can’t stick to it have you really factored in their lifestyle, food preferences, training ability etc?? Many trainers post ups their success stories (understandably) but do any ever post up their failures? No, they label their client as the failure because they couldn’t stick to the plan. It’s the other way about.

Success belongs to the client, Failure belongs to you!

5. Stop thinking you’re Gary Vaynerchuck or Martha Beck – so many trainers posting 5/6 times a day on social media claiming they’re always on the Grind or hustle thinking they’re Gary Vaynerchuck. STFU – you’re in a cafe posting on Instagram for the 6th time today so you can’t be hustling too much unless your training your clients at Starbucks. I have no problem with people posting a lot on social media but if you have the time to do it that often thenstop telling people you’re fully booked! You’re not. (PS I love coffee and you will find me in coffee shops a lot – but I’m not claiming to be fully booked)

On that point you’re not Martha Beck either. As trainers we are qualified to provide training advice. That’s literally it. We aren’t even qualified to give out nutrition plans unless we do an additional qualification. So why do many trainers think they are life coaches?? Just because a lot of trainers are in the job they love it doesn’t mean we preach to everyone to pack in jobs and follow their dreams. Talk to your clients, listen to their problems but don’t attempt to psychoanalyse them and offer your “professional” opinion. Show them how to deadlift – it will solve most problems anyway.
Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year.

Back to basics!!

There’s a reason squats, deadlifts, presses, rows and chin-ups have been used since before gyms even existed and ever since – they work!!

Scroll down through social media apps for even 2 mins and you’ll see the latest trend in fitness that makes all sorts of promises usually aimed at “toning” or “burning twice as much fat” as any other regime.

In the space of 2 minutes while scrolling through facebook today I saw a videos for what looked like a twerking class, a bungee class, a trampoline class, synchronized partner workouts and a workout using only a Swiss ball. These videos accumulate 1000’s of shares and likes on social media and people are immediately impressed. Unfortunately people now measure the quality of something through its social media hits.

The fact is, so many people in the fitness industry are looking to come up with the next trend they can package up, licence and sell round the world. If the video looks cool it will get more social media response and sell better. But if you look over the last 5, 10 or 20 years so many fads have come and gone. People have realised they were fun for a while but didn’t really work long-term. They were nothing more than gimmicks. Even the latest piece of equipment gets taken and made into some sort of group workout. A training plan and what equipment you use in a workout should suit your goals not make your goals suit one piece of equipment. Take for example kettlebells or suspension trainers- they are great tools to help you reach your goals but they get made into gimmicky classes where exercises are coached badly and it becomes a counter-productive tool rather than an effective one.

Add to that, people now take “functional training” classes and “strength & conditioning” classes. If you haven’t completed an in-depth assessment of an individual you cannot know what is functional or dysfunctional for that person and likewise if you have conducted a needs analysis of an athlete’s sport and an individual screen you can’t possibly design an effective strength & conditioning program for that person/team.

Exercises that have long stood the test of time have done so for a reason. That’s not to say new exercises can’t be effective but if you are investing your time and hard-earned money in reaching your goals you want bang for your buck:

SQUATS

DEADLIFTS

PRESSES

ROWS

CHIN-UPS

CARRYING HEAVY THINGS

These exercises will never let you down. Variety is important to a degree (mainly to keep you interested) but the basics should never change. And here’s the next basic principle:

Once you get a program from a good coach, stick to it. People hop from program to program because it sounds catchy or their friend is doing something different. A good coach will program in progressive overload which is how your body adapts and changes shape so you need to give it time to work.

So in short:

• Don’t buy into fads
• Invest your money in a good coach/gym rather than every latest trend
• Don’t feel you have to change exercises all the time
• Make sure you always squat, hinge, push, pull and carry things.

 

 

Do you even recover bro?

I would say one of the key areas I see people getting wrong with regards to their training is their recovery. Recovery is just as important as the training itself when it comes to getting fitter, stronger or looking better. Recovery is where the magic happens. Let me break it down.

Your training is the stimulus your body needs to change but the adaptation occurs in the recovery phase. Hopefully you’re applying principles of progressive overload to your training ie. incrementally increasing load (weight on bar) or volume (sets x reps) over time. Progressive overload will challenge your body and as it recovers neuromuscular adaptation will occur. Apply a new stimulus (training session) too early and the body hasn’t maximised adaptations from the previous stimulus. Essentially you’ll be retracing your steps without making ‘dem gainz’.

The graph below helps show the role of recovery in training:

The horizontal black line is your biological state before a stimulus, in other words the state of your body before session. Applying a stimulus through training will create fatigue, (in the case of resistance training usually some micro tears in muscle fibres etc.). The greater the fatigue and damage caused then the longer the recovery. If training is too easy, the stimulus isn’t high enough to force adaptation. If training is adequate to create a stimulus for the body to change but recovery is inadequate then you also won’t maximise potential adaptations. So how do you ensure you recover well??

 

Recommendations to Maximise Recovery

1. Good Quality Sleep – I personally find all the scientific recommendations for sleep to be great if you’re a full-time athlete with no partner or kids but we need to get real. Very few people are going to be able to get 8-10 hours sleep per night do their job, get workouts done and have time to cook, clean, socialize or care for family. I am lucky if I get 6 hours on my lie in days. In an ideal world I would get more sleep but a trainer’s day starts at 5am and finishes at 10pm and then there’s housework to be done, food to be cooked and eaten, and family, friends and partners to see at some point. So if like me you’re not going to get 8-10 hours sleep how can you get by on 5-8 hours.

• Make the room as dark as possible and if you can avoid using electrical devices 45mins-1hour before sleep.
• Ensure you are not going to bed hungry or thirsty. Have a late snack in your diet so your body does not wake up from hunger. Likewise have a glass of water before bed to ensure thirst does not disturb your sleep.
• Meditate or perform some breathing techniques. Meditation isn’t all ‘ummmms’ and sitting with legs crossed. Focus and be aware of your breathing and eventually work towards focusing on nothing, emptying your mind. If you’ve ever done yoga and fallen asleep at the end then you know what I’m talking about. You can get some great guides to meditating and try it before bed and see how deep your sleep feels. You’ll know when you wake up the next day.

2.  Allow 48 hours recovery between training the same muscle groups

In the case of resistance training try to allow 48 hours+ recovery between bouts on the same muscle group. Eg. Don’t train a heavy leg session on Monday and again on Tuesday. This is one of the reasons split routines are so popular. This doesn’t mean you have to do split routines. In fact full body workouts have been shown to be much more effective especially in beginners. Just make sure you don’t train the same muscles heavy on consecutive days.

Example Splits: (I’ll start with my own as I find it very effective)

2 Upper & 2 Lower Body sessions

Monday: Upper Body 1

Tuesday: Lower Body 1

Wednesday: Conditioning

Thursday: Upper Body 2

Friday: Lower Body 2

Weekend: Football

This allows me to train each muscle group twice per week using big compound movements with 72 hours recovery in between. You could follow this template for full body and do 2 pull sessions and 2 push sessions.

You also have a more bodybuilding style split such as:

Monday: Chest & Triceps

Tuesday: Back & Biceps

Wednesday: Rest

Thursday: Legs & Glutes

Friday : Shoulders & Abs

(just an example)

It all depends on what your goals are as to what split you chose. If you like doing full body sessions every time I would recommend doing Monday, Wednesday, Friday with active recovery days in between where you can do some conditioning or work smaller muscle groups that tend to recover quickly such as arms.

3. Nutrition

Getting the right nutrition is key to recovery. If you do a tough leg session and feel shitty and seriously sore the next day but you got a decent sleep then you know your nutrition was off. Try and have a post-workout shake after training. Add a scoop of good quality whey protein to water and some maltodextrin/ dextrose or fruit. This will help replenish protein and carbs quickly in the body. Your muscles can quickly replenish glycogen stores and protein can get to work repairing those micro tears in the muscle fibres. Ensure then you are getting good balanced meals. Micronutrients are key too – these are your vitamins, minerals etc. Fruits and veggies contain lots of them so get these in. Plenty of variety and colours will ensure you are getting most micronutrients in.

4. Recovery Therapy

I won’t delve too far into this section. There is mixed evidence as to whether different recovery protocols are effective. Personally, I love hydro pools (4 degree hell). 13 minutes in here (unlucky for me) has me feeling refreshed.

Massage therapy is always useful if not for recovery then to ensure over time you are preventing injury and dysfunction.

Compression clothing such as tights and calve socks etc., from my research do not have any statistically significant benefits (I looked at independent studies as most that back them up are commissioned by the manufacturers). However, what I will say is if you have tried them and you feel they work then they work. They certainly won’t make your recovery any worse.

Self Myofascial Release – foam rolling, self-massage etc. These techniques will help improve blood flow in the target area aiding recovery. This can be done in your warm-up and even on your off days or active recovery days. In a similar way just getting moving again, bike, walk, jog at low intensity will help with recovery.

 

So hopefully now you have a better understanding as to why recovery is so important. You can now look at your training regime, nutrition and sleep and see could you be making better improvements by implementing some of these suggestions.

 

Good luck!

 

 

 

 

 

Ladies – What they aren’t telling you about your physique goals…

First off, not all ladies have the same physique goals so forgive me for some generalisations in this blog but basically I want to clear up a few things about some common physique goals to give you all a more realistic idea of how your body shape will change and what timescale this will take.

“May the booty get fatter and the tummy get flatter” 

 

1. It is very difficult to build muscle and lose fat at the same time.

It is difficult to have a big butt and 6 pack at the same time but not impossible. Building muscle generally requires a calorie surplus (more calories in than out). To get a bigger “booty” requires you to build the glutes through the correct training and nutrition. It is very difficult to do this at the same time as revealing your abs. This is because to strip fat away to see your abs requires a calorie deficit.

I’ve used this as an example as many female clients seem to have these goals when it comes to their physique. If someone has a lot of fat then it is very possible to gain muscle at the same time as losing fat but in most cases you need to cycle between the two. A short cycle of hypertrophy (muscle growth) followed by a short cut to reduce body fat and reveal the muscle.

 

“I don’t want to build muscle. I just want to tone”

 

2. Toning is not a type of training or nutrition protocol.

Toning is an effect created by the two approaches mentioned previously. Toning is the product of building muscle and burning fat. Whilst my quote above is not strictly true,  I wish the phrase “toning” would disappear from the fitness world. It is one of the words that has made women afraid of building muscle as they think they’ll start to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. It also misleads people into thinking they can turn fat into muscle or tighten up certain areas of their body through training without realising they have to burn fat through correct nutrition.

Again when I suggest to female clients about building some muscle often the response is “Oh no. I just want to tone up”. And this is exactly what you’re not being told in mainstream media and by trainers who want an easy sell – You have to build muscle, then burn fat!

If you solely concentrate on fat burning you will just end up skinny as there is little muscle underneath to reveal.

3. The physique model you follow on instagram doesn’t look like that year round

So hopefully this is more common knowledge now amongst you ladies. Physique models have all sorts of tricks at their disposal. They time their cuts for their competitions or photoshoots. They manipulate carbohydrates and water levels coming up to competitions to swell muscle and reduce amount of water between muscle and skin to look ripped. For photos, they are tanned, have great lighting, photoshop and filters. All these things together make for great snaps of them looking ripped and very happy about it.

You cannot maintain this look all the time. To go through what they do for a photoshoot or comp on a regular basis would be bad for your health but it is their career and they do it every so often and are experienced enough so it isn’t as much of a danger to their health. They also probably don’t use half the products they say they do so don’t waste your money.

 

I hope this blog has helped to give you some realistic expectations about your physique goals. The aim is not to dishearten anyone. If you want a big but and ripped abs its going to have to be done over a long period of time cycling short periods of building muscle followed by short periods of reducing body fat. It is never straight forward and linear. If a trainer tells you it is and they can give you both big glutes and 6 pack abs in no time then alarm bells should ring. They just want your money. I want money too, we all have a business to run but I will always advise clients honestly before they make any decisions.

I’ll finish off by saying do your squats, lunges and hip thrusts “because no one ever wrote a song about a small butt”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PRACTICAL Speed Training for team field sports!!

Speed = Distance/Time

The point of speed training should be to cover a particular distance in a shorter amount of time. I think everyone can agree with that! However, speed training is made overcomplicated and in many cases the training I see is counter-productive to the ultimate goal. A lot of coaches use an array of equipment and drills in an attempt to make players feel like their getting faster.

I’m going to discuss some common mistakes I see with speed training and provide guaranteed methods to improve speed and make sure it carries over to game day performance within the context of team sports such as soccer, rugby and Gaelic.

It is important to remember that a small percentage of these team sports are played at maximum velocity. The majority of any game is played in either acceleration or deceleration and in multiple directions and so training should account for this.

I want to firstly cover common mistakes I see when training for speed:

1. NOT ENOUGH REST BETWEEN BOUTS – From my background in Gaelic football I know this is common across many club teams and possibly county teams. To improve speed, the emphasis has to be on quality over quantity. Running multiple 10/20/30+metre drills with relatively little rest will only improve endurance. Time the sprints, if times increase; quality is dropping – either cut the drill or increase the rest time.
2. LEAVING “SPEED TRAINING” TO THE END OF SESSIONS – Another one I’ve witnessed a lot. At the end of a session the coach calls the players to the line to run sprints. This is NOT speed training. It can still serve a purpose working A-lactic energy systems and speed endurance but it will not make you faster. if you want to increase speed train for it right after a good warm-up when you are freshest.
3. LACK OF DECELERATION TRAINING – Most teams train acceleration with sprints etc. Very few teams take the time to properly train deceleration. When people talk about agility that is essentially what they mean – the ability to accelerate and decelerate quickly –  if you can’t slow down efficiently, you can’t turn. So many players can be quick in a straight line because of strength & power but when they turn can look like the slowest player on the field. This because they can’t decelerate quickly. Imagine getting in a sports car with crappy brakes. It would be super fast until it came to taking a bend.  Most atheletes during drills decelerate by standing upright and leaning back. This does not lead to a good turning position that enables us to change direction and accelerate in that direction efficiently. Deceleartion drills can include landing drills, with double leg jumps, single leg hops, lateral hops etc. When sprinting, try and decelerate by lowering your centre of gravity and almost ending up in a lunge position. This video shows a good example of the deceleration pose. Deceleration drills.
4. POOR RELATIVE STRENGTH – relative strength is basically how strong you are in relation to your body weight. The stronger you are relative to your weight then the quicker you will normally be. Poor relative strength can be down to poor body composition or just being generally weak. (I will discuss this in the suggestion section)
5. TOO MANY LADDER DRILLS – I’ll preface this by saying when it comes to kids I think these are absolutely great. Kids are still developing their central nervous system and these drills are great for training stride frequency and fundamental movements. However when it comes to adults (post-puberty) stride frequency is very difficult to improve but what can improve is stride length. Ladder drills are a great warm-up for speed sessions but remember speed=distance/time. If you think of a ladder being  4 metres long, this might take 3-4secs to negotiate doing a drill. That same distance should be covered in under a second when sprinting. Spend the majority of your speed session working on improving force production to increase stride length, not reducing it.
6. CONCENTRATING TOO MUCH ON COACHING MECHANICS – coaching mechanics can be a good thing. Better position and technique will make someone faster. But it is often over-coached. Players are given too many points to think about and end up slower as a result. Speed is reactive and instinctive in-game situations. Add to that if you have a senior player who has run with a certain style for a number of years, it can be dangerous to try to change their running mechanics and a good coach SHOULDN’T try to do this. It is different if you are working with an individual athlete who’s sport is running but this blog is talking about speed in the context of team sports. Identify an area they could easily improve and try that first, not 3 or 4 improvements. Let them drill this movement until it becomes habit then you may try another improvement.

 

So that’s where I see a lot of teams going wrong. To improve speed a lot of individuals will benefit from different methods but as we are talking in context of teams I will identify the most common areas to improve.

1. START FRESH! QUALITY OVER QUANTITY – As I have already mentioned it is important to conduct speed training when you are at your freshest. Just after a good warm-up is best. If doing sprints use a timer to ensure the quality of sprints is being maintained. If it drops then increase rest or cut the speed work for that session.
2. INCLUDE DECELERATION TRAINING – This is fitting brakes on the sports car that match the horse power. Make sure you/your players can safely  and efficiently decelerate. This will make them quicker as they can slow down and turn faster.
3. IMPROVE RELATIVE STRENGTH – Getting leaner (reducing body fat) will generally do this. Most players if they drop some body fat will gain some pace. Then you need to increase strength – hit the gym with big compound movements (squat variations, rows, chin-ups, deadlifts and presses) will gain the most for your time. You can be strong without being powerful, but you can’t be powerful without being strong. In order to improve your pace and power your body has to have the strength to produce the force to propel you further.
4. IMPROVE CORE STABILITY – Improving core stability will help your body apply force in the desired direction and not waste energy due to insufficient movement. (We call these energy leaks). Improved core stability will also help your body absorb and dissipate forces more efficiently. This will help decelerate and then accelerate quickly.
5. IMPROVE MOBILITY – As increasing stride length will help increase speed, we need to ensure we have the mobility in our joints to allow for this. In team sports you usually find a lot of players have tight hips and often ankles. This prevents the athletes achieving optimal position to improve stride length. It can also lead to tightness in other areas such as hamstrings that may eventually lead to injury.
6. IMPROVE RUNNING MECHANICS – Improving running and in particular acceleration and deceleration mechanics will have a massive benefit – IF COACHED CORRECTLY. In adult athletes, each person will have a unique style of running. Don’t completely overhaul this style. Look for simple areas of improvements and tweak technique.
7. REACTIVE DRILLS/PLAY YOUR SPORT – To improve true agility, athletes have to react quickly to either opposition or ball. Ladders, cones and hurdles can never really mimic game situations. Playing games and conditioned games is the best way to improve agility. It never seizes to amaze me how many teams overlook the most obvious and effective way to train for a sport…..PLAY THE SPORT!!!!!!

 

There are a lot of other methods such as plyometrics, jump training, contrast training, olympic lifting that will help improve speed but they require a solid base of strength, stability and mobility. Speed training is a much bigger topic than a quick blog post. But quite simply to take it right back to basics:

 

Get Stronger! Improve Mobility! Play your sport!!!

 

 

Yo-Yo Dieting – Think About What Didn’t Work!

We have all seen or been examples of someone who is a yo-yo dieter. They go on a diet with some success. They lose weight. Then they regain the weight and even in some cases become heavier than they were before they started dieting. There are a number of reasons for this:

• Diet in itself is usually a short-term commitment rather than a lifestyle change. As soon as the diet ends it is unreasonable to assume you will maintain the results.
• Drastic decreases in calorie intake. People reduce their daily caloric intake by too much. By a drastic decrease in calories, it is likely that you will lose weight quickly but you don’t give yourself anywhere to go. Results plateau and the only way to get things moving is another decrease in calories. This creates an unhealthy cycle that is not sustainable. Quite often large weight loss incurs a large amount of lean tissue loss too. Bye, bye to all your hard gym work.
• Reduced Resting Metabolic Rate(RMR) – Your resting metabolic rate is the amount of calories burned to keep your normal bodily functions going. It accounts for 60-75% of your total daily energy expenditure (calories burned). When you lose weight quickly this usually means losing some fat, water and lean tissue such as muscle. Losing muscle will decrease your RMR, so not only have you cut calories to get a calorie deficit but now your RMR is lower meaning you’ll have to stay at this low intake just to maintain weight.
• Focusing on what worked – At a recent seminar in Belfast a nutrition coach pointed out that people tend to go back to what worked for them without thinking about where it might have failed.  For example, someone loses 6lbs on a diet, then weight loss plateaus, then weight gain begins again. Instead of thinking that the diet was flawed because it wasn’t sustainable long-term, they go back to a short stint at that diet, lose some weight, plateau and then begin the cycle again.

I think most people have some experience of Yo-yo dieting and the unfortunate thing is that there are a lot of trainers, coaches and overnight pyramid selling nutritionists that rather than address and help people with this, they exploit it for money. Again people get great results short-term but if you were to go back after a year and measure this persons body composition, more often than not they’ll have rebounded to their starting point or perhaps gained more fat.

All trainers, nutritionists, lifestyles coaches etc should have your long-term health in mind. This isn’t just body composition, but dental health, digestive health, cholesterol, blood pressure etc. It is possible to get results quickly and maintain them but most products/transformations I see being sold are huge calorie deficits for quick weight loss, with no thought of preservation of lean muscle mass.

Without ranting any further I want to provide you with my main guidelines on 1. losing body fat and minimising the loss of muscle mass and 2. gaining muscle mass and minimising the amount of body fat gained.

1. Focus on what didn’t work – if a diet got you results and then stalled. Don’t go back to step 1 and begin again. Think about why it didn’t work. Find a more sustainable solution that is more of a lifestyle change.  Speak to a coach who can show you long-term results rather than 9 day, 4 week or 12 week results.
2. Aim to increase/ preserve lean muscle mass – If you don’t use it, you lose it. Don’t get caught up doing endless cardio to try to burn calories. The amount of calories you burn whilst training accounts for quite a low percentage of your total calorie expenditure. Instead aim to preserve/increase lean muscle mass by following a progressive resistance training program. Squats, deadlifts, presses, rows, weighted carries, sprints and jumps will form a great program. This will in turn increase your RMR which accounts for 60% of your total calories burned. 
3. Calculate your RMR. – RMR Calculator . Once you have your RMR only cut your calorie intake at first by no more than 10% for fat loss. If you are losing more than 2lb per week you will need to add some calories back in. For muscle gain, increase calorie intake by 10% or RMR. You will need to track and reassess this every few weeks.
4. Tracking – Download myfitness pal. Enter your new calorie intake goal that you have just worked out. Enter everything you eat and drink to track how close you are to hitting this goal each day. Don’t just guess.
5. Follow these guidelines:
   1. Protein source with every meal
   2. Drink water
   3. Vegetable and/or fruit with every meal
   4. Get 80% of your food from whole, 1 ingredient foods.
   5. Allow some of your calories to eat the foods you enjoy – e.g. if you want ice cream on Saturday allow yourself a reasonable amount but work this into your weekly calorie intake.
   6. Supplement when necessary – Don’t live on supplements but use them to hit targets if you can’t do this from food alone.

Spotlight on Spotlight

Last night BBC Northern Ireland aired a Spotlight investigation into elicit products in the fitness industry. Having worked in the fitness industry for almost 10 years and recently opened my own gym I felt an obligation to provide an opinion on the show and the overall questions it raises.

As expected, immediately following the show there was a huge social media reaction with people providing opinions on the show. From my own observations the show seemed to polarise opinions and didn’t provide a wider, informed perspective for viewers to base their opinions on.

I have now watched the show three times before providing my own opinions on the matter. All three times I watched with pen and note pad and jotted notes on not only the subject matter but how it was reported. Being quite scientific in my approach to training and nutrition I always feel its important to be unbiased and impartial in investigation and always provide context and perspective to the evidence you present. so what follows will be my full and (I would like to think) impartial review of the show.

‘Undercover in the Fitness Industry’

The 30 minute show was presenting an investigation into elicit products making their way into the fitness industry. To summarise, the reporter – Stephen Dempster – investigated a number of private shop owners and personal trainers who were allegedly supplying banned substances to members of the public.

Now first let me state, I have been involved in fitness for 10 years. I have never taken, been offered or advised anyone to take a banned substance. In fact, the only supplement I take is Whey protein and even then this may be one serving a day. As someone who has been heavily involved in sports and specialises in performance preparation, I completely condemn the use of banned substances. However I am a realist and know that many people especially in physique sports have used or currently use banned substances.

Having said all that, the Spotlight report was sensationalism. For me any investigation should provide context to the matter at hand. Yes, banned substances can be dangerous and there is a problem but in Northern Ireland deaths attributed to cigarette smoking are 2,300+ per year (British Medical Association). Stephen Dempster wasn’t walking into every cigarette vendor in NI and asking them why they were selling cigarettes when they knew they were dangerous. I could find any statistics on the annual number of deaths due to anabolic steroids.

The show opened with tragic a story about Claire Squires. Claire collapsed and died during the final stages of a marathon. It was later revealed that Claire had mixed water with a sports nutrition supplement that contained an amphetamine called DMAA and this may have contributed to her death as it is a stimulant that elevates heart rate (in the case of an endurance event) to a dangerous level. This was an untimely and unfortunate death. I feel however that this was used unprofessionally to help push the agenda of the show right from the outset by engaging people’s empathy and emotions.

The product was Jack3d, legal and if my memory serves me correct readily available in stores such as Tesco at the time. The multi billion pound company didn’t come under any scrutiny throughout the show.

The show went on to investigate products in small privately owned businesses and a well known personal trainer. What it uncovered was certainly something of concern but I also question the methods of the investigative journalism. Yes some of the products should not be on shelves but is that the fault of the shop owners? Are they graduates of chemistry with on sight labs to test products? In one case a shop owner admits that a product is banned but sells it anyway. To be honest there is no defence for this. In other cases, to the shop owners knowledge the products are legal. If they thought they were banned I doubt they would display them on shelves.However, if this is the business someone enters they have a certain level of responsibility to know what is in the products they sell.

The show certainly uncovered some important truths regarding some of the readily available products that may be dangerous but where the show failed was in providing the wider perspective and context. The fact is people choose to take these products. They choose quicker results rather than long term health. The introductory line is ” Are the products you take to support a healthy exercise regime poisoning you?”. The answer: NO!!! Spotlight did not investigate these products as people who train for health do not seek banned substances. The people buying these products are usually driven by body image and as one guy in the program states are “prepared to take elicit chemicals to get the body they want”.

I also feel the show could have done more to actually educate viewers rather than incriminate business owners. They had interviews with Prof. Gareth Davison from the University of Ulster. Prof. Davison is a lecturer in Exercise Physiology. they covered some of the side effects of continued steroid use. Most of which people are already aware of. I feel they could have better utilised his knowledge to briefly describe the physiology of how anabolic steroids work in the body. If nothing more, just to provide some scientific balance to the report rather than compounding the image that all bodybuilders just inject steroids and get big and its nothing to do with their training and nutrition.

As I mentioned before there are much more harmful things being sold to 16+ year olds in shops in every corner of the country but the right people are driving money into the economy from these so they remain legal. While I condemn the use of steroids, I also condemn the nature of this report and feel it provided little to no context to the problem. It portrayed the shop owners and personal trainer as someone pushing these items on to customers when in fact it is customers who make the choice. I think ultimately any product in which you can’t trace the source is potentially harmful, but people are willing to take risks in pursuit of their ideal body image. Stricter regulations need enforced from governing bodies rather than a grey area that may put both business owners and customers at risk.

If you are not 100% sure something is safe to sue then don’t take it. Problem solved.

NB. When I type blogs my brain goes too quick for me to type. I hope I covered most points. Any comments welcome.

A Picture Paints A Thousand Words…..Or Does It?

Scrolling through facebook the last few weeks you may, like me, have noticed a lot of “transformation” pictures appearing. Trainers will always use these pictures as a portfolio to help attract new clients in a results driven, competitive business. This is perfectly understandable, both clients and trainers are proud of their work and to motivate others to do the same. But, seeing so many it got me thinking about what the pictures don’t show and what exactly is the responsibility of the fitness professional.

Firstly, be somewhat sceptical when you see some “transformation” photos. Common things I have seen in before photos include people standing with their shoulders slumped forward, a blank look on their face, sticking out their stomachs, standing close to the camera (appearing larger) and #nofilter. In contrast, after photos generally show the person standing further away from the camera, shoulders back, smiling, stomachs tensed and their favourite instagram filter applied. Just have a look at some of these:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-dixon/weight-loss-secrets_b_3643898.html

But what I really want to get into is the responsibility of the fitness industry and what implications these photos can have. While these photos can be the motivation someone needs to get kickstarted, I personally feel they create unrealistic expectations. Instead of promoting long-term lifestyle changes such as regular activity, balanced nutrition and adequate recovery, they promote more extreme diets, a rigorous training regime and ,usually as a result of both, inadequate recovery. In many cases this can put people off exercise for life.

AT WHAT POINT DOES A TRAINER’S RESULTS COME BEFORE THEIR CLIENTS LONG TERM HEALTH?

I personally feel that as a fitness professional I have a duty of care to my clients long-term health. I have to put in place the foundations that will help improve and sustain this. This sometimes means telling the client what is best and not just meeting their short-term goals. If someone walks in to a gym presenting terrible posture but wants to get leaner surely it is the job of the fitness professional to address posture first and aim to improve quality of movement before drilling exercises that may otherwise exacerbate the problem not simply ignore it in order to maximise short-term reductions in body fat and boost their portfolio.

Unfortunately as an industry there are hundreds of newly qualified trainers every week in the UK and Ireland meaning even greater competition in a self-employed market and therefore an urgency to get quick results. I can’t see this changing any time soon and so I encourage all my fellow fitness professionals to please provide more context and explanation to transformation photos that you post not the usual “8 week transformation, contact me!” . It is your responsibility to promote lifestyle changes and long-term health choices.