Sports Fitness

"The top clubs have learned these lessons (some the hard way) and don’t put much stock into single comprehensive packages from vendors and have instead built their own internal architectures that they control. This approach allows them to use the ‘best of breed’ tools where they make sense and have the flexibility to make changes when needed." -Sports Data Hub So now we are all drinking from the same Holy Grail? Elite sport is not alone in thinking the latest Dashboard from vendors will solve problems, and we are seeing the loose term algorithm everywhere. As predicted, SaaS is growing and is this a trend or eventual outcome of where we need to be? I am frightened in current sport because the basics and foundational information is so poor with the average coach. I just got an intern this summer, but really it's a 12 week mentorship of deprogramming of all the hype. A few years ago Kevin Goodfellow was ahead of the time by anticipating big data and the need for a solution, but now I see that the reality is we are still not ready for it and when we are the window may be closed with open source options. His concepts are excellent, but the honesty in performance and sports medicine is not there. The truth is that very few people are doing what they need to do because the difference between great and winning the big one is talent and money. While some gaps have closed by sport science, the unpopular issue is that the CBA and other factors make good intentions neutralized. What Kevin envisioned is happening, and I am hopeful we will learn that we need to shop wisely on solutions. A high profile consultant sent me a text reminding me of the Holy Grail from various SaaS providers for teams and organizations and I am doing the 180 and focusing on the human side. At the end of the day, Bob Alejo is right. You are going to eventually need to train, and not much has changed with the human body and training in 30 years. Sure some great advancements are there, but are we doing what works well? For example Marco Cardinale showed how Creatine is loosing popularity in research and now every coach wants the Kool-Aid beet flavored. This is got to stop. I am guilty of promoting technology too much, hence why the next few blog posts before summer vacation is about resetting the direction to the human body. I will go analog while my intern is getting all the best data, such as Tensiomyography and HRV daily. I will be the native warrior and he will be the futurist sent back in time. So what to do? Education- Conferences are good starting places but workshops are needed. To get momentum we need to sit down with people and just do it. If you can follow along then that's a sign to catch up. If you want to play or tinker with things later don't fool yourself. I have seen people year after year and glacier speeds is not a exaggeration with evolution. Go analog and pen and paper and leave the expensive paperless hype to Eliteform and other SaaS vendors. Big data? Please. Big data is real but only 1% of vendors are really dealing with realities. Evidence- Place all of the data for the year into a folder and upload it to the cloud and share a timeline. Show exchanges or chat messages. Prove to everyone that miracles and proprietary algorithms are truly working. Now that the brain is en vogue, this is going to insane with nonsense. We still can't do heart rate properly and we are interpreting things from games? What are the interventions for all of this? Medical data is also the hardest, what are people doing now when they have guys on the table? Using an intern to collect notes? Engagement-If athletes are not engaged it doesn't work period. If the process isn't enriching it doesn't matter if it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. I do suggest hiring sales people for vendors to make their products better for users, not to sell to teams. If your product is good you don't need sexy sales gimm

Thanks to Jonas Tawiah Dodoo for sitting down with Dan Pfaff shortly before the huge exodus of coaches at UK Athletics.  Jonas was also the Sprints and Jumps Coach at the Lee Valley HPC before UKA centralized it to Loughborough. This was a casual conversation, and the first question to Dan was the components to a successful 100m and 200m race.  [HINT: It starts with the start, no matter what anyone says] The second half of the video or conversation was dedicated to Paralympic sprinter Jonnie Peacock and his training. Here is the 15 minute video on SpeedEndurance TV: Copyright © 2012 by Speedendurance.com. All Rights Reserved. Speedendurance.com is on Facebook. Visit: Most Popular articles for 2011: 400 meter Training and Racing: 400 meter training from Supertraining 400 meter training workouts the 6×200 meters 400 & 800 meter training workouts: The breakdown Race strategy: How to run the 400 meters 800 meter Training: Training 800 meter runners Sprint Starts: Usain Bolt training regimen video: The Start Football 40 Yard Dash: 40 yard dash times for Usain Bolt & Ben Johnson Baseball 60 Yard Dash: Baseball 60 yard dash: What’s a good time? Recovery: Ice Baths for Workout Recovery Supplements: Nutrition for recovery: The Post-workout drink controversy Analysis: Usain Bolt’s 100m 10-meter splits and speed endurance Strength Endurance: Matt’s 60-second pull up World Record Video

Rest Day Gym closed for weekend at Regionals Open Monday all classes

I have been fortunate in the time since the Olympic games to spend time with seven coaches of Gold medal winners in Athletics (Track & Field) from the London games. In two instances I got to watch workouts and spend significant time with the coach and athlete. These are the commonalities that all shared: Passion – In most cases they wore their passion on their sleeves. Technical Knowledge – They knew the basics and didn’t stray far from them. None of them made what they did overly complicated. Emotional Intelligence – They know their athletes and themselves. They listened to the athlete. Systematic – Nothing by chance, thorough plans, but still built flexibility into the system Humility – Not overly impressed with themselves, willing to credit others and seek help. Did not go it alone. Paid their dues – All except one has been coaching for quite some time; they were not always coaching gold medal winners. Interestingly enough these are the characteristics I see in great coaches at any level. These characteristics are what it takes to be an effective coach.

STRONG Overhead squat 5-5-5 WOD 4 RFT 8 overhead squat 65/95 8 push ups run 320 m

In the second of the three birthday workouts coming to you this week, we celebrate our own staff members's!Jessie joined us earlier this year as the primary office manager of CrossFit SLU and an amazing addition to the crew!----WOD for Wednesday 5/22STRENGTHevery minute on the minute for 12 minutes:2 snatchesCONDITIONINGHBD JPfor time:800m run50 front lunges, 61/40kg800m runPost results to whiteboard/comments/Cody. ----Extracurricular CV 5/22RUN, ROW, BIKE/AIRDYNE"LACTATE SHUTTLE"5 minutes on2:30 minutes recovery6 minutes on3 minutes recovery7 minutes onThese are all out efforts. Go for max speed and distance.Extracurricular Cardio is optional homework but is highly suggested for becoming a well-rounded athlete. It is usually released twice a week: once for the first half of the week, and again for the second half (and weekend). It will not be given out during our Max/Testing weeks, as to not interfere with our maxing/testing.Our athletes can complete on their own at home, on the road, or at our gym (given that the rower/AD isn't being used by the classes). This will not cost a class to utilize the equipment once given the okay by the trainer. Have fun, stay fit!----

AMRAP 10 minutes:4 minutes Row (Cal)3 minutes DB Ground to overhead, (2x 20kg(15kg) DB's)2 minutes Muscle up 1 minute Burepee  Post total reps to comments. Log results online (Beyond the Whiteboard)  

A private meeting was in the Concord and Lexington area, purposely located to symbolize the future of what is happening in Boston. I predict that more private style workshops such as the one hosted by Ricardo will be the future. Flying halfway around the world needs to be more than just visiting a professional team and doing a keynote, the bar is raised as hotel and airports are not enough to make sure speakers are happy. Speakers want to learn and network as well, as they need to be aware of what is going on or find themselves seated watching the new blood like some are doing now. With several conferences fading and some extinct (Remember when SWIS was huge?) the disruption is keeping the speakers enticed, the attendees happy, and the vendors satisfied. Of course the people behind the conference such as Art Horne need to be thanked beyond he handshake and blog nods, as he is the one driving this and his hard work is appreciated. Two presentations (Keynote) were Saturday morning and both were excellent. Keynotes are important as they are presentations everyone should watch because they are that universal and valuable. This year was more data driven and Fergus Connolly presented on High Performance. Anticipating the future and being cutting edge Art Horne reached out to Fergus, likely because of the Leaders in Performance credibility. I pleaded to share more examples of solutions by his work. For example, after practice share what the decision trees after practice for Rugby with regards to lifting and workout design and medical integration per day. Just three athletes with post game to pre game during a week would have been a game changer. Fergus made the right choice and gave principles to get people exposed to High Performance management, as skipping that step is good for 5% of the audience but the majority must be educated and exposed to new concepts. I was trying to take pictures of his dashboard and photos of moneyball for this blog, but the ken burns effect made the dashboard flash a moving target. I felt like I was getting hypnotized from the animation and needed to get some fresh air. Fergus did a fine job sharing his impressions of what was necessary, and his breakout session was more open for questions. Stu and the battle of Waterloo was awesome. I will be using unholy like a bizzaro Robin as Dr. McGill always does a nice job. Three huge points of contention were brought up. One, the issue with FMS and prediction of injury or similar. I know I have been hard on the FMS but honestly I do a similar set of screens for mobility as part of my assessment. Still, some don't want to talk about how effective it is. I like Gray Cook but now we are starting to get a little revisionist history. The great thing about conferences is when they video people's beliefs, tough to delete it unless they are burning the tapes. We have a problem with DYI Drones in the NFL spying during practice! These guys are so smart they are not buying them but building them just in case they crash! Back to Stu. He brought up points that I stated about single leg exercises and FMS screens and he is going to debate Gray Cook at Stanford. Like a rap battle, I expect a few one liners and some awesome research by Stu. I think Gray Cook needs to rethink the research beyond the Rob Butler stuff because most of the research doesn't zero in. Stu warned about hyper loading the single leg exercises with spine and pelvic strain. He also warned about thoracic mobility exercises and showed an alternative. Now another point I wanted to address to Stu was his use of GSP to validate core and the use of the pulse. If you look at the slide it's too fuzzy to see the EMG rate but anyone doing a ballistic Kettlebell swing takes just as long as an olympic lift. I love how Stu says anytime he hears a statement he goes to the lab to find out. Marco showed this on EMG (not saying it's only the cardinal sign) but I think we need like Fergus said more field

The pre-conference workshop was 5:15 on Thursday and I made sure I left about an hour ahead to beat Boston traffic into Northeastern. Art has hosted the BSMPG for years and is having pre conference workshops to stimulate learning and allow great people to network. The main interest I have is seeing the cross-fertilization of ideas from different people. If we have the same cult year after year we inbreed. We need fresh ideas, even if we don't agree with the speaker. I find the best speakers share areas that I don't have experience with and while they may have different conclusions or methods, it makes me think about what areas can be explored. Three speakers spoke last night, they were Dr. Marchese, who has his own clinic up in Woburn. Fergus Connolly, a high performance advisor out of Ireland, and Val Nasedkin from Omegawave. Each session was under a half hour or so and this was not easy to do. Dr. Marchese- The dirty secret is that when an athlete isn't getting better in the Boston area and are desperate, you may go up to Woburn. I have witness several athletes fly in after seeing some very public super therapists and come back with tales of reality. Emotionally it hurts to hear after spending good money that the quality of care is so poor. The reason I think this happens is placebo. Think about it (no pun intended), if you fly to a super therapist and believe you will get better, a shotgun of massage and light exercises and of course time, people get better. Rest does help everyone get better, so we need to appreciate that nature is helping us on the backend. Dr. Marchese was interesting because he was following the WCT model of presenting, meaning bring citations and share what you do. I like the idea of handouts as I am always going to be a paper guy. His presentation ran longer than the allotted time and that is a classic error. Remember that the time we have affects the presenters behind us. Aside from that it was very similar to a typical neurological exam based on classic neuroscience and testing. The challenge here is the huge array of possible interpretations. This is why I suggest checklists and flow charts. The brain is a big area and while it's impressive, we are human and can't juggle everything in one's head. One EPL team bought an algorithm for post concussion testing to ensure athletes are lowering their risk to ACL tears and it's a glorified checklist that calculates risk into a 10% chunks. I liked the presentation but felt that the tests should have been cut in half and shown some sort of transfer to game specific results via motion capture or similar otherwise it is patient feedback and that is very subjective. Fergus Connolly- I have known Fergus for a long time and it's great to see him climb the ladder to high performance advising. If you go to his website it's a bit of a mystery but perhaps that's part of the adoption cycle of a private consultant. His presentation was sort of a inspirational powerpoint full of Ken Burn effects and great visuals. He basically gave wisdom nuggets for 25 minutes and was clearly prepared. He was polished and prepared, but my concern is the people in the audience would copy the style. I think a Garr Reynolds presentation done too much is annoying because the visuals are just pretty stock photos. With any visual it must display a lot of information if we are doing an educational presentation. Inspiration or wisdom is a different beast so you can bust out the keynote software on your mac and be stylish when telling stories or giving tidbits of help, but sharing what people should do to get athletes better should follow the Edward Tufte model. Show the data. I felt that Fergus was appropriate for last night because he was trying to get the point of getting athletes to buy in, and I hope he shares what he does Saturday in detail and not show slides with a few quotes. If one is a top consultant one has to show why, wit

Yesterday afternoon I was in Hasely Crawford Stadium in Port of Spain Trinidad watching over three hundred track & field athletes of all ages train but I could have just as well been in London, Brisbane or back home in Sarasota. What I saw was a bunch of drills and exercises; it was obvious in most cases the drills were just imitations of what someone had seen on YouTube or learned at a workshop. Drills and exercises without purpose and context are nothing more than busy work, just stuff. If you use drills know the purpose of the drill. Know why you are using the drill or exercise at this time with these athletes. Just doing work and getting tired is not training. There must be a purpose and direction to everything you do to prepare the athlete for the demands of competition. Drills often get the athlete better at the drill and do not transfer to the actual event. I have learned over the years that less is more. Fewer drills and exercises done with a specific purpose that the athlete clearly understands are more effective that a bunch of stuff wishing and hoping they will work. Training with direction, intent and purpose will produce results.