S&C or Personal Training for Health Benefits?

How many coaches are training people and not really addressing why they are doing what they are doing and then not even checking to see that it works. The job of a strength and conditioning coach is not to simply make players tired and fatigued, although this may lead to increases in some elements of fitness and even in elite sport people do it.

I think what is very important though is that the only goals of a strength and conditioning coach are :

1: Prevent Injury

2:Improve Physical Performance

I think that the two goals written above get mis-interpreted and sometimes athletes end up following the personal trainer route of training for general fitness.

Dont get me wrong there are some amazing PT's, I know a few myself but in many instances they are faced with clients who dont really have a goal other than drop a dress size, lose fat or look better. It is very important then that the training done by many PT's (probably rightly for those goals) and to be honest, normal gym goers, who get on the bike or treadmill for half hour and burn calories, is not performance enhancement training for sports. Just making people tired as is seen in circuit training and other such activities is not a basis for performance enhancement. Athletes need to be following structured training programs which are multi-faceted after being screened for movement inefficencies via something along the lines of the PCA. This will measure athletes in the basic movement efficiency that make up sports and games, such as lunge, squat, step up, brace and rotate. This then gives a basis for program writing and allows a specific plan to be created and monitored/adapted as the days/weeks pass.

This program must be adaptable and this is where good coaching comes in and many miss the trick. Vern Gambetts talks a lot about watching movement and that "testing is training and training is testing". We never stop assessing our athletes because we should be constantly looking at how they move and where the weaknesses lie and adapting their program to make them move better over time, giving them a better base and mechanical resilience.

For goal #1 above I think that every S&C coach should work with a physiotherapist or sports rehabilitator for a few weeks a year and try to see and feel what they see and feel. This will give you a solid grounding in how the body breaks down through injury so that we can then try to prevent it by giving our athletes the movement efficiency to cope with their sport. Kelvin Giles says that every injury has a journey and we need to be trying to source the paths that it took so that we can not let it happen again in others. This analysis of injuries and MDT group discussion about how they occured over time builds personal experience and when coupled with a solid anatomical and bio-mechanical knowledge, allows coaches to see poor movement that could leads to injury in a gym or field setting.

Water and Hydration

WATER

Water constitutes about 75% of our muscle tissue, 22% of bones, 74% of your brain, 25% of fatty tissue and works within every single cell in the body to transport nutrients and remove waste products. It regulates body temperature allowing heat to evaporate from the skin in the form of sweat. Put simply, the body breaks down without adequate fluid! When we are dehydrated, blood becomes thicker so the body must work harder to transport it to the brain so we lose concentration and feel fatigued.

It is also important to note that too much water is detrimental to performance. The latest research from the American College of Sports Medicine and USA Track & Field says that thirst is an appropriate guide as to when fluid replacement should be commenced. This means drink when you feel your body needs it and stop when you feel satisfied. From this point on in your session consume water regularly.

Bottled water has nudged past milk to become the second most-consumed commercial drink in the country. Due to this there are purified, fortified, enhanced, flavoured waters and more and so it’s worth considering which type is best. I would say simple bottled is best wherever possible and this is due to the endless amounts of research detailing contaminants in tap water and realistically it varies region to region so much that I couldn’t hazard a guess at the quality we drink daily.

Hydration after Exercise

· Weigh yourself before and after training.

· Drink 500-600ml water for every 1 lb lost. You can include your water used for mixing the recovery drinks and protein.

Is Coffee Bad?

Caffeine use in elite sport is a well researched area and so I can evaluate many studies and detail some evidence based tips for you on its use to maximise performance. Firstly, the increase in nerve activity brought about by consuming caffeine stimulates the release of the hormone epinephrine (adrenaline) which in turn, leads to such effects as increased blood flow to muscles and the release of glucose by the liver. Caffeine also increases brain levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which is involved in cognitive (thinking) processes, alertness and memory. For this reason alone there are numerous studies which show that caffeine significantly improves mental focus. Also in a recent study from the University of Scranton, Pennsylvania, researchers showed that coffee is the number one source of antioxidants in the average American's diet.

If stimulatory effects are your goal then freshly brewed black coffee is the way to go and not a large latte which is full of milk! An average cup of black freshly brewed coffee contains about 130 milligrams of caffeine (compare that to the 80 milligrams in a regular Red Bull), plenty to give you the mental focus you are after. But remember, everything in moderation because athletes who rely on caffeine to get "up" for games or training are often creating a mental "barrier" that is hard to escape. And as your body develops a tolerance to caffeine it will take more and more caffeine to get the same feeling of "focus" you've come to expect. Also avoid putting a lot of sugar or sweeteners in your coffee or you will ruin the effect you are looking for by increasing sugar content just like r

egular Red Bull. So if you want to use coffee as a pre training/match stimulant then you must not over use it during the week! A maximum of one cup per day would be advised and then 1-2 cup freshly brewed coffee 1-1.5 hrs before competition (game time).

Will it dehydrate me?

A study on the effects of high dose pre-exercise caffeine ingestion found no significant impact on hydration (Can J Physiol Pharmacol, 68(7): 889-92, 1990). Other studies have showed a mild diuretic effect in extremely high doses (8 cups filter coffee per day!). However, this diuretic effect is also governed by the concentration of caffeine in any given drink. For example, an espresso coffee provides around 100mg of caffeine in just 50ml of water, but you’d have to drink around 1 litre of tea to obtain the same amount of caffeine, significantly hydrating your body in the process! A medium Americano contains around 100mg caffeine (1 espresso shot) but 350 ml water.

My advice is clear on caffeine, if you want to gain a stimulatory benefit from it then abstain from using it a lot until competition/training time. The message from years gone by of cutting out tea and coffee is WRONG because there is no evidence of a diuretic effect when used this way and you will also then lose the hydrating effect of drinking the water you made it with!

The Turkish Get-up

The turkish get up is a great exercise that falls into the category of getting lots of bang for you buck!
It was used by strongmen back in the iron days and for very good reason. For PT's in posh gyms maybe this will make gather a few strange glances from moustached businessmen or over tanned woman but so whgat, its a great exercise for strength, power and endurance development.
So how do you do it?
1.Lie on your back with your KB or Db in your hand, elbow locked.
2.The idea is that you stand up without flexing the elbow and keeping the weight directly above you
3.Firstly, flex the trunk and get one hand down as a stable base
4.Get onto one knee and keep weight above you with elbow locked
5.with the other leg now behind you ina semi split squat position, stand upright
6.Now return to starting position by simply reversing these steps

Here is a perfect example of the turkish get-up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDQUlshxO_8&feature=related

Tips:
Keep your eyes on the weight at all times
Start out with a light weight until you get a feel for the movement

Accurately predicting injury in collision sports

Collision sports such as rugby league and rugby union have a high incidence of injury due to the impact on their bodies during both training and competition. Much research has centered on how we can prevent injury and following on from this we have seen many papers on prehabilitation and exercises to address muscular imbalance and poor inefficient movement mechanics.

A recent paper by Tim  Gabbet (JSCR 2010) has looked at things a little differently.  He has tried to develop a prediction model for non-contact soft tissue injuries in elite collision sports. 91 professional athletes were used over 4 years with the first 2 years being about recording injury data and training load.  The second two years followed the same cohort but used a prediction model looking at planned and actual training load to predict soft tissue non-contact injuries.

Training load was measured in a very simple way as previously discussed by the BOA's Dr Marco Cardinale (http://marcocardinale.blogspot.com/2010/09/monitoring-training-load-in-team-sports.html) whereby RPE is taken post session and multiplied by the number of minutes trained to give a load.

A total of 159 injuries were recorded in the second two years and of these, 121 were predicted using the model!

Basically the model looked at a training load threshold which when surpassed increased the players likelihood of injury hugely. Players surpassing this 'threshold' were 70 times more likely to get injured whereas players who didn't were a 1/10th less injured!

Could Jonny have prevented some of his injuries?

These findings support the notion that scientifically measuring and monitoring training load can successfully predict and then prevent soft tissue injury in elite collision sport athletes.

In conclusion it is imperative that we not only plan our sessions diligently to prevent muscular imbalances and to enhance good movement mechanics to prevent injury, but also that we measure training load and establish an 'acceptable' range whereby our athletes are at risk of injury and also establish an 'unacceptable' range which occurs when they move above this range and the risk of injury is too high.

For this to work we need a progressive head coach who understands science!