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.

I was going to talk about Adaptation, Accommodation, The SAID Principle, The Overload Principle and the Rest Principle.  However I am going to talk about the DOMS Fairy.  This Fairy is aggrieve!!!  FYI you can set PR’s after being visited by the DOM’s Fairy…  Don’t be scared! DOMS is delayed onset muscle soreness. DOMS is the biological phenomenon (AKA: DOMS Fairy) that causes extreme pain, soreness, and stiffness that occurs in athletes muscles 12 to 72 hours after exercise.  The pain and soreness will slowly go away and can take as long as a week to completely go away if the exercise was extremely intense.  DOMS mostly occurs when an athlete begins a new exercise program, changes their exercise routine, and/or drastically increases the duration or intensity of their training.  The pain can be unbearable and sadly it’s a completely natural response for the body’s adaptation process.  As the body adapts through recovery and sometimes a painful recovery, the muscles gain strength and stamina caused by muscle hypertrophy, which is the enlargement of muscle tissue due to the increase size of the cells.  You should always take precautions before, during, and after training that will help you recover from a hard training day.  By implementing these recovery elements, it’s very likely that your recovery will be quicker and a lot less painful. Top 10 Ways to Reduce the Pain and to Speed Up the Recovery from DOMS: Before Training 1.) Nutrition – A great diet is absolutely essential.  The guilty and quantity of food you put in your body before training is your fuel during the workout.  Eat healthy, well-rounded meals for at least a few days before increasing the intensity of your training or starting a new program.  Make sure it’s high in protein, high in fat and some complex carbs.  Cut out all alcohol, sweets and processed foods. 2.) Hydration – It goes without saying that staying hydrated is the“KEY” to training!  It is essential for an athletes health, but in the since of DOMS it is essential for muscle function and reducing soreness.  Make sure you are fully hydrated a week or 2 before increasing intensity or duration and/or starting a new training program. During Training 3.) Warm Up – Don’t go straight into working out.  Heading straight into your workouts will make you more susceptible to injury and will increase soreness post-workout.  You should start with a will rounded warm up program which will get your body warm to increse performance and recovery.  Monostructural exercises like running or jump rope are great ways to start your warm up and get your blood flowing.  You also want to ease into intense training. 4.) Regulation – Don’t go overboard!!!  This is the biggest cause of DOMS.  It’s important that you challenge your limits, but you have to know your limits.  This is where having a log is key.  Gradual progression (AKA baby steps) will get you further in the long run and help to prevent DOMS but you need to know what you did last time.  Also if you got super sore from 50 deadlifts at 315lbs you might not want to do 275lbs for 100 reps.  Unless this data is in your log book you would not know. 5.) Cool Down – Is a most!!!  Ways to cool down include light cardiovascular exercise, rolling out, distraction and static stretching.  These cool down techniques will progressively lower body temperature, helping to flush the body and help increase range of motion in muscles and joints.  All these techniques will help to reduce DOMS. After Training 6.) Nutrition – Within 0 to 30 minutes you need a post workout shake.  With in one hour of your workout, it is crucial to eat to get out of a catabolic environment and to get back into an anabolic environment.  This will increase recovery rate and performance.  In your post workout shake immediately after a workout you want to have an abundance of complex carbs and protein.  “Also, studies have suggested that the anti-inflamma

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)  

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.