In episode 149 Joel Jamieson, S&C Coach, joins us.

Specifically Joel will be looking at:

• When to apply extra recovery methods
• KPIs to consider for recovery
• How to use heart rate variability to improve recovery

Recovering from training in the 21^st century seems like you need a maths degree, with numbers and stats all over the place, not to mention thousands of sports technology companies bombarding you with adverts via social media. So how do you cut through the crap and optimise data use in the recovery process?

We wanted to find out how the professionals do it, so we got Joel Jamieson to join us on the Science for Sport Podcast to answer exactly that question. 

Jamieson is a Strength and Conditioning veteran, with over twenty years of experience in elite-level sport, and his own company 8WeeksOut. Next to the fact that he’s worked with some of the world’s best MMA fighters and combat sport athletes. He has spent the majority of those twenty years using data to inform his decision-making in the recovery process, ultimately allowing him to optimise performance.

So before we delve into the murky depths of data science, let’s first establish why we need to recover after an exercise bout. 

“During training, we put our bodies in these states of stress. Whether that’s physical stress, mental stress, or environmental stress. Recovery is the process of the body adapting to those periods of stress. That’s where we actually see the gains from fitness,” Jamieson said.

So the recovery process is the part that actually allows us to adapt to the training stimulus we provide the body. 

If that’s the case, how do we go about enhancing that process and ensuring that we optimise our adaptation to the training and recover in time for the next one?

We need to get the big rocks in place, the first of these is sleep.

“So sleep is a huge piece of it. If your sleep is cut short, we know that it drops anabolic hormones like testosterone and it increases the catabolic ones. So your recovery is going to be compromised,” Jamieson said.

Next to this nutrition is imperative in recovery, as it takes energy for your body to adapt to the training stimulus.

“Nutrition plays a big role. If you’re not getting enough calories, you’re not getting enough nutrients and high-quality foods. Clearly, that’s going to slow down your recovery,” Jamieson said.

Lastly, you will need to manage your stress levels outside of the training situation too, this means limiting your mental stress.

“If you are mentally stressed from your job or your life all day long, that puts you in a sympathetic state where your body is under stress. It can’t be under stress and recover from the training stress at the same period of time. So chronically being mentally stressed slows things down,” Jamieson said.

Now that we know how to recover a little better, how can we use data to improve these big rocks? Well according to the seasoned American, we can use both subjective and objective measures of recovery.

“Heart rate variability (HRV) is really kind of the single best tool we have. Aside from that, subjective feelings do matter,” Jamieson said.

Those subjective measures are generally easy to record, for example applying a scale of one to ten on the key variables listed above (sleep, nutrition, stress), would be a great start. By monitoring these you could easily start to pick up any patterns in your recovery levels and adjust training accordingly.

The objective measure, HRV, is probably the more interesting and somewhat mysterious variable. It’s a tricky concept to understand, but once you get the basics of it right, you’re in with a good chance of measuring your recovery.

“Heart rate variability measures essentially the pattern of our heart rate. So instead of just looking at, you know, 60 beats per minute, it’s looking at that distribution of heart rate intervals across that minute,” Jamieson said.

This measure can be taken using a smartwatch, although there are some questions about the validity and reliability of this method. A more accurate method would be to use a heart rate chest strap. Measurements should occur in the morning, preferably before getting up and walking around. You can hear a detailed explanation of this in the podcast.

Importantly though, you need to be able to interpret this data. So what do you actually have to look at?

“The greater level of variability generally indicates that we’re more shifted towards that recovery state and a lower variability indicates that we’re more on that stress state,” Jamieson said.

Obviously, the goal after a session is to get ourselves into that recovery state and ensure the body is adapting to the given stimulus.

“HRV gives us a snapshot into our bodies autonomic function, which gives us a snapshot into how our body is coping with the stress that we’re under, and how much energy we’re devoting towards either stress or the recovery over time,” Jamieson said.

This eludes to the fact that HRV is best collected over time and that you can see any changes from your own norms after days and maybe even weeks of data collection.

So there you have it, how you can use both subjective and objective data to enhance your recovery process and ultimately improve your sporting performance.

If you want to hear more from Jamieson about recovery and how to implement HRV optimally in a training setting. Be sure to listen to the full podcast using the link below.

The post Episode 149. How to use data to optimise recovery – Joel Jamieson appeared first on Science for Sport.

In episode 117, Steve Thompson, Course Leader for the Masters in S&C at Sheffield Hallam University, joins us.

Specifically Steve will be looking at:

• Obstacled to VBT use
• Best practice in VBT
• How anyone can use VBT to optimise training for under $10

Velocity-based training (VBT) might seem like the biggest thing in physical training since the barbell itself, so why aren’t you using it yet?

If you still haven’t started, you’re not the only one. Due to the perceived difficulty in its implementation, many coaches and athletes choose to look the other way, missing out on a range of fantastic benefits associated with this top-level training tech.

If you are one of those who consider it too difficult, time-consuming, or expensive to implement, you’ll need to hear what Steve Thompson has to say and how you can overcome these obstacles.

Thompson has just finished his PhD investigating the use of VBT, where he performed leading research through Sheffield Hallam University, while also implementing his research as an S&C coach in the field.

Thompson’s research has great importance to the strength and power training world, with VBT touted as the future of the strength training industry. However, the uptake has not been equal to the hype. 

Athletes could get a wide range of benefits from VBT such as daily autoregulation, velocity cut-offs, and increased motivation during lifts. But despite such a great range of benefits, there are several barriers which stop widespread adoption. 

So we wanted to grill Thompson to see whether coaches and athletes can overcome the obstacles preventing them from using this game-changing technology.

The first issue is likely the price – when you see triple or quadruple figures on an internet sales funnel, it can be easy to switch off and file VBT under ‘one for when I’m rich’.

But before you give up on the idea, it’s important to consider the different types of VBT devices available on the market and their price points.

“VBT requires or utilises technology which might be a linear position transducer, an inertial measuring unit, a camera, or a smartphone,” Thompson said.

Generally speaking, the linear position transducers have been seen as the gold standard as they use a string attached to the bar to directly measure velocity, however, recent research shows that cheaper options like smartphone applications might be equally valid and reliable.

“In terms of the data, certainly from some of the research I’ve collected as part of my PhD, smartphones were there or thereabouts when compared with a linear transducer. If you consider the price difference, then there are benefits to those that have tighter purse strings,” Thompson said.

This makes VBT accessible to almost all practitioners, with smartphone applications available in the region of $10. These devices might take more time to configure and be less useful in large team settings, but they certainly lower the entry barrier to VBT and might be perfect for an athlete training alone.

That time investment when using a smartphone might be reduced when using higher-end devices designed for large teams, but Thompson shares some of his research insights which showed that coaches were still worried that they’d be spending time with their heads in an iPad, instead of coaching their athletes. Another barrier to overcome.

Fortunately, the Englishman performed further research with the goal of using VBT at the start of the session to prescribe training loads with sniper-like accuracy, with coaches then having the luxury of putting the tech away in favour old school face-to-face contact.

“We came up with a system and an approach to daily one rep-max prediction, allowing you to do it right to start the session, that would adjust the loads for that day. You could then put the technology down and be a coach,” Thompson said.

If reading Thompson’s latest research isn’t for you, he has a simple alternative.

“Another way of getting around the issue would be simple education for the athletes. So spend some time upskilling the athletes on how to use the devices – this frees you up to be more present on the gym floor,” Thompson said.

So there you have it, the most common barriers to VBT usage, and how to overcome them. You can get started for a tenner and potentially spend just minutes on VBT training per session. 

If this has got your brain whirring and you want to learn more about VBT, including how to practically implement it in your setting, listen to the full podcast using the link below.

You can download the podcast on any of the big hosting services, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or just use this link: https://scienceforsport.fireside.fm/117

The post Episode 117. Overcoming the barriers presented by Velocity-Based Training – Steve Thompson appeared first on Science for Sport.

In episode 119, Emily Partridge, Special Medical Projects Advisor at the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS), joins us.

Specifically Emily will be looking at:

• How to use Cryotherapy in sport
• Physiology underpinning it’s use
• Budget alternatives

Everyone has seen videos of athletes seemingly freezing themselves like a sci-fi billionaire trying to live forever. But is cryotherapy really a cure for old age and muscle soreness? Or are you just relieving yourself of that hard-earned cash?

To answer that question and potentially save you bundles of dough, we asked Emily Partridge, Special Medical Projects Advisor at the Australian Institute of Sport, to join us on the Science for Sport Podcast. Before working at the AIS, Partridge completed her Ph.D. Investigating the effectiveness of cryotherapy in elite athletes.

With that fantastic knowledge and experience, we wanted to ask her exactly why cryotherapy is used, and whether it’s really worth your hard-earned time and money.

Before we get into the inner workings of cryotherapy, it’s important to discuss exactly what it is, and why on earth anyone would put themselves through it in the first place.

“Cryotherapy is essentially a super-cooled version of an ice bath, using vaporised liquid nitrogen,” Partridge said.

So it sounds pretty fancy from the get-go. But what are we looking at in terms of temperatures?

“The protocol where your head is outside the chamber is normally, say, 3 minutes at -140 degrees,” Partridge said.

Minus 140 is a lot of cold – if you’re scared that you’d be walking out with frozen appendages, me too. Fortunately, Partridge is on hand to explain that our fears are unwarranted.

“It’s dry air. So the difference between that and an ice bath is that the conductivity through air and water are very different. So before you go into a chamber, you have to sort of dry yourself off, make sure you don’t have any sweat, or water on your body, because that can freeze you and that would hurt quite a bit. But because it’s dry air, it’s not actually too bad,” Partridge said.

But why on earth would you put yourself through such a torture device? Well, apparently, it can improve recovery from intense exercise.

“It’s essentially acting like a pump over your muscles. It causes vasoconstriction – your muscles tighten up. And then as soon as you leave that cold environment, your muscles relax, causing vasodilation. And that allows an increased amount of blood flow to go through your muscles,” Partridge said.

So using cryotherapy causes the blood vessels to constrict and then relax, filling the tired and/or damaged muscle tissue with blood, which helps to assist in the recovery process.

But considering most cold exposure can provide a similar response, why on earth would you take the coldest option possible?

Interestingly, it’s claimed the mind-blowing -140 degrees is actually preferable to some other alternatives.

“Research that’s looked at relative discomfort shows that it’s a lot better using cryotherapy than ice baths or cold showers. So that’s why you often hear that athletes are using it more because you’re only in for three minutes and it’s not nearly as bad as an ice bath,” Partridge said.

So if some athletes find it preferable to other cooling options, why isn’t there a cryotherapy unit in every gym? It’s very probably due to the monstrous costs associated with its use.

“[For a] top-of-the range, new unit, you could be looking at anywhere up to $AU100,000,” Partridge said.

That’s before you’ve bought the liquid nitrogen to actually cool it down. All things told, users can look forward to a hefty bill when it comes time to square up.

“So in Australia, if you just wanted a three-minute exposure of cryotherapy, you’d be looking at about $90. So that’s $30 a minute,” Partridge said.

So if your wallet doesn’t quite extend that far, what are the alternatives?

Ice baths and cold showers are the obvious competition, and the relative cost of these is very attractive compared to cryotherapy. Which begs the question, which is better?

“Whether cryotherapy is better or not, it’s not really determined. It seems to be that they are all relatively similar,” Partridge said.

So with that in mind, you’re probably better off getting yourself down to the shops and buying a couple of bags of ice, chucking it in a (cleaned) bin, and calling it an elite recovery centre.

If you want to hear some more information on the physiology of cryotherapy and the subtle differences between this and other methods of cooling the body for recovery, check out the full podcast using the link below.

You can download the podcast on any of the big hosting services, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or just use this link: https://scienceforsport.fireside.fm/119

The post Episode 119. The cheap alternatives to cryotherapy – Emily Partridgeon appeared first on Science for Sport.

Specifically Rachel will be looking at:

• What good and bad breathing looks like
• How to breathe well
• How to breathing transfers to sport performance

Breathing is easy, right? In, out, in, out, and repeat for as long as possible. Well, when it comes to optimising your performance, it might be a little trickier than that.

It turns out that breathing is super complex and has massive knock-on effects for a range of other key physiological functions, which are essential when it comes to performing at your highest level.

That’s why we asked Rachel Vickery, Physiotherapist turned consultant to join us on the Science for Sport Podcast. 

Vickery started her breathing journey with a fifty thousand word thesis on the topic and went on to apply her knowledge as a physio at the top level of sport, including with the New Zealand Olympic Team.

It’s exactly that applied knowledge we wanted to steal during the podcast. But before getting on to the magic of improving breathing, it’s important to recognise the importance of breathing as a whole. 

“Breathing can affect biomechanics and particularly upper limb biomechanics. So if someone’s not breathing well, they’re going to use all of their upper limb musculature in a slightly different way. That’s going to impact things like technique, accuracy, and the ability of your upper limbs to generate power,” Vickery said.

But how do you know whether you’re at risk of these issues? 

“If you’ve got dysfunctional breathing or less efficient breathing, it doesn’t only show up as breathing problems. It can show up as a whole lot of other performance issues, Vickery said. 

Bad news, as your horrible performance might be masking some breathing-related problems. Obviously, it would be good to nail down whether breathing is indeed the issue, or whether you’re just not that good at your sport.

Fortunately, Vickery is on hand to describe what she thinks good breathing looks like. At rest, she describes it as the following:

“Our mouth should be closed and we should be breathing in and out through our nose, our belly should just be gently going in and out as the diaphragm goes up and down and pushes the abdominal contents just gently out of the way,” Vickery said.

So that’s a good start, if you’re panting with your mouth open using short sharp breaths, you might want to have a quiet word with yourself and read on.

“The out-breath should be a little bit longer than the in-breath. There should be a little pause after the out-breath, and there should be no movement through the upper chest shoulders at all at rest,” Vickey said.

So there you have the perfect breath at rest. Now, I know while reading this you’ll have adjusted your breathing to roughly speaking, exactly what is written above, but maintaining this is an issue.

“The challenge with breathing is it’s one of those things that we’ve actually got conscious control over, but most of the time it runs subconsciously,” Vickery said.

This means that when you’re performing your sport, you don’t have the conscious energy to regulate each breath. Especially in dynamic team sport environments. 

Vickery takes plenty of time during the podcast to discuss exactly what you can do about improving your breathing during performance, but suffice to say that the basics lie with breathing well at rest.

Before you leave to listen to the full podcast, however, I want to share with you her ‘get out of jail free card’ which athletes can play when they’re under high pressure, like taking a penalty at the world cup final.

“The best thing you can do at that moment is a relatively big in-breath. But the focus has to be on the out-breath, just really slowing it down because your heart rate actually beats slightly slower with the exhale,” Vickery said.

Alongside this, there are two extra options that the New Zealander suggests which are less related to breathing.

“Lift your eyes and actually look at something that’s either on the horizon and be aware of your peripheral vision. Do something to just open your vision up a little bit because that’s going to cue into neurophysiology,” Vickery said.

And lastly, it appears that just thinking positively could also have an impact.

“Have a gratitude thought that you’ve actually prepared or a very positive action thought that you’ve already pre-prepared that is going to lead you in the direction of the action that you actually want to execute, Vickery said.

So there you have it, how breathing could be destroying your performance and what to do about it, plus some bonus advice for very high-pressure situations. 

If you want to hear more about exactly how to improve breathing during your performance, hit the link below to listen to the full podcast!

The post Episode 135. Is poor breathing limiting your sport performance? – Rachel Vickery appeared first on Science for Sport.

Specifically Matt will be looking at:

• How to program plyos for younger and older athletes
• How he classifies plyometrics
• How to apply plyometrics for elite performance

Do you have zero jump game but want to upgrade to NBA-level hops? These massive explosive outputs are the pinnacle of many sports, but training to get them can be really tricky. 

That’s why we asked Matt McInnes-Watson to join us on episode 136 of the Science for Sport podcast. 

McInnes-Watson is renowned for his plyometric coaching talents through his company Plus Plyos, he even combines his love for speed and power with a self-funded PhD investigating plyometric exercises and their application to sport performance.

Before we dive into the depths of plyometric training, it’s important to define what plyometrics are.

“My term for plyometrics now is becoming more and more simplistic in that it’s a landing and take-off based action that’s pretty fast,” McInnes-Watson said.

Easy right? Well, there’s just a little more to the story.

“It’s it has that elastic and reflexive nature to it. And we’re able to use a lot more of the tendon’s ability to give us a bit more of a snap back as opposed to more of a muscular base movement that might be a bit slower and more of a kind of concentric effort to get out of the bottom of the movement,” McInnes-Watson said.

But why are plyometrics so important? Well, they underpin athletic performance in a range of movements, not just jumping.

“I think that it’s all part of the foundation of movement that we use within sport. How many sports use landings and take-offs regularly? Are you running well? If it’s yes, then you’re probably using some sort of plyometric ability,” McInnes-Watson said.

Despite the use of plyometric type movements across a wide range of sports and sporting movements, when the majority of coaches think of this type of exercise, they go immediately to ‘shock training’ made popular by the Russians in the nineteen eighties, however, McInnes-Watson believes that this type of training isn’t necessary to elicit adaptations in the majority of athletes.

“I think realistically we have probably 95% of athletes that just need to learn how to land and take off effectively using typical ground-based locomotion,” McInnes-Watson said.

So how does McInnes-Watson plan plyometrics? Well for beginners, he keeps things simple.

“They’re going to start with more general capacity-based plyometrics and realistically that shouldn’t leave that program throughout the year. They’ll have a sprinkling of high-intensity stuff, but the likelihood for them to be able to handle a high volume of more intense stuff is a lot lower,” McInnes-Watson said.

As athletes progress, he uses increasing amounts of higher-intensity plyometrics. In this case, he increases that to approximately 40 % of the program.

“We want to get to a stage where we’ve got advanced guys that are getting more exposure to higher demanding movements. It still might only be up to 40 % of the program. That’s is where I’ve got to with a junior international athlete,” McInnes-Watson said.

This begs the question, what exactly are these higher-intensity plyometrics? 

“If I can get them to be doing more things for height, hops for speed or distance. If I can do more of that in the whole of their year, that ultimately becomes my goal,” McInnes-Watson said.

So there you have it, a glimpse into how McInnes-Watson programs ground-based plyometrics for sport performance. 

It’s interesting that he tries to save the higher-intensity plyometrics until they really need it, and just gradually increases the volume of these as the athlete progresses.

If you want to hear more from McInnes-Watson, be sure to check out the full podcast using the link below, which includes a detailed description of how he uses a four-tier system for planning and progressing plyometrics.

The post Episode 136. How to use ground-based plyometrics for ultimate sport performance – Matt McInnes-Watson appeared first on Science for Sport.

In episode 137, Siobhan Milner, Strength & Conditioning Coach, joins us.

Specifically Siobhan will be looking at:

• The role of pain
• How pain works physiologically
• Pain without symptoms
• How to deal with pain using science

Is your brain tricking you into more pain than necessary? It’s possible, and you can find out why by delving into the crazy world of pain science.

Pain is part of everyone’s life, especially athletes who can easily pick up bumps, knocks, and injuries.

In order to work out how athletes can use pain science to hack their brains and adjust the impact pain has on their lives, we invited Siobhan Milner on to the Science for Sport Podcast. 

Milner is a Strength and Conditioning Coach with the Dutch Olympic team, having completed a master’s in rehabilitation science. 

It’s her background in rehabilitation science that we wanted to tap into, plus of course how she applies that science in the real world with elite athletes. 

Before we kick off with all the important pain science, it’s important to establish exactly what pain is, because everyone’s perception of it varies.

“There’s an updated definition from the International Association for the Study of Pain. They define it as an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with or resembling actual or potential tissue damage,” Milner said.

Note that vague association with tissue damage, it’s not all about cause and effect, but more on that later.

How does pain work? Well, it turns out you’re making it up. That’s not to say that it doesn’t exist, but that your brain forms the concept of pain in relation to stimulation.

“We have nociceptors throughout the body. And what they do is they sense changes to temperature, pressure, chemical, and mechanical stimuli,” Milner said.

These have been traditionally called pain receptors, however, as you can see above, that’s not entirely accurate.

“So pain receptors don’t actually exist. This is something that is kind of a misnomer for nociceptors,” Milner said.

Following so far? So these Nociceptors detect changes in the body (not pain) and send signals to the brain. 

“That information is interpreted, then it’s then sent back to the spinal cord and nerves to upregulate or downregulate pain,” Milner said.

That seems pretty simple to me, so what makes this all so complex? Well, it turns out that the processing part of your brain can play tricks on you.

“What happens is the brain is interpreting how much protection is needed, and that can be context-specific,” Milner said.

Unfortunately, the brain can interpret things poorly. This means that some people experience high levels of pain for relatively small stimuli, or even lingering pain despite no physical tissue damage. 

So how on earth does that happen? Well, there’s some interesting research that looked at how our situation and mental state can impact pain.

One study looked at how participants responded to the same stimulus (hand plunged into cold water) while viewing a red or blue light. Those viewing the red light experienced more pain than those viewing the blue light, likely because they expected it to be hot.

“Anything that makes you feel unsafe will potentially up-regulate pain and anything that makes you feel safer will potentially down-regulate pain,” Milner said.

How does this transfer to the sporting world? Well, the way an athlete interprets a situation could be massive in their response to pain or injury.

“This is why when an athlete stressed when there’s something else going on in their life, you might also see things like old injuries seem to flare up even though nothing’s happening at a tissue level,” Milner said.

With this in mind, it’s important to ensure athletes have a positive supporting environment and access to good pain (re)education. 

This could mean reading up on the topic or listening to the full podcast with Milner to hear how she helps athletes improve their pain perception in the real world.

In the podcast Milner details how she helps athletes reintegrate back into the gym after an injury or lingering pain, that’s essential listening for anyone involved in the injury rehabilitation process.

The post Episode 137. Pain Science: How you could be tricked into pain, and how to deal with it – Siobhan Milner appeared first on Science for Sport.

In Episode 138, Ashley Jones, Strength & Conditioning Coach, joins us.

Specifically Ashley will be looking at:

• How performance training in rugby has changed in the last 30 years
• Influence of technology on performance
• Training methods which have stood the test of time
• The future of rugby performance

Strength and conditioning in rugby union has come on leaps and bounds over the last thirty years, but what does the future hold? 

If you want to be one step ahead of the game, you’ll need to hear what Ashley Jones, Strength and Conditioning (S&C) coach with thirty years of experience, has to say.

In those thirty years, Jones has worked all over the world, including with both northern and southern hemisphere international rugby teams. He also boasts the personal accolade of NSCA Coach of the Year in 2016. 

But before we dig into the future of rugby, it’s important to look at where the performance world has come from. 

Jones was at the front line of those developments in the nineties.

During his first professional role in rugby, Jones wanted to ease his players into their preseason running. Unfortunately for him (and the players) the head coach had different ideas.

“I know these guys haven’t done a lot, so I thought we’d just do a forty-minute run and we’ll get on to the next session. The coach turned around and said no, take them out again, flog ‘em,”

The ‘flog ‘em’ mentality has been increasingly difficult to find in elite sports in recent years, but what has led to this change?

Well according to Jones, the education levels of everyone in and around the team have improved.

“I think the education of the coaches has grown in parallel with the education improvements of the strength and conditioning coaches, and also in parallel with the education of the playing group as well,” Jones said.

This means that everyone on the staff is working with a higher baseline of knowledge, potentially allowing higher-level conversations around load monitoring and training principles. 

In some instances players are even educating themselves to the same level as coaches, this bodes well for the future of athletes and coaches alike.

“When I was working in Edinburgh, I had two players that were actually doing their master’s degree in strength and conditioning. So you can actually talk to the players about some fairly complex topics,” Jones said.

This level of player education is set to improve in the future with information readily available to any athlete who cares to google it.

But where does Jones think that the future of rugby will go? Well, firstly he thinks that the rule-makers will have a massive impact.

“I think the rule changes in the game will dictate where we go,” Jones said.

Those rules dictate the rest and work players undertake during a match, and therefore the conditioning needs.

“The year 2000 was the last season where we had unlimited interchange in rugby league. And I remember the time I was with at that stage we averaged 47 substitutions a game,” Jones said.

This had a significant impact on the type of physicality players brought to the game.

“You saw they saw the size of rugby league players changed significantly from the 2000 and earlier to what we have now, where it’s quite rare to have some of those monsters still playing the game,” Jones said.

Next to any rule changes, Jones is looking forward to the development of new technology and its impact on health and performance.

“I’m actually excited about some of the wearables coming through, for example, the use of the mouthguard for data collection and particularly for head injury observation is going to be extremely important moving forward,” Jones said.

These mouthguards can provide staff with real-time data on the impacts that players receive. This means that medical staff can track data on head injuries and reduce the risk of long-term injuries such as concussions.

If you want more information on these mouthguards, check out episode 95 of the Science for Sport Podcast.

Next to the education levels of athletes and technology improvements, Jones thinks that making the players one of the key stakeholders alongside other staff members can improve performance.

”The playing group themselves is a very, very important to connect with, what they bring to the table is often missed and can actually add value to the overall program and I think to build great compliance into the program itself by having them as one of the stakeholders in the group,” Jones said.

So there you have it. The past present and future of rugby performance. 

If you want to hear more from Jones including some awesome stories from his coaching career, check out the full podcast using the link below.

The post Episode 138. What is the future of rugby S&C? – Ashley Jones appeared first on Science for Sport.

In episode 139, Julia Eyre, Sport Psychologist and Strength Coach, joins us.

Specifically Julia will be looking at:

• Importance of sport psychology
• 3 key sport psychology tips for all athletes
• Case study: How to apply these tips

We’ve all been there, in a dip and unable to perform. Whether it’s work or sport, if you’re serious about performance, you’ll need some sure-fire ways to improve your psychological state when the chips are down.

That’s why we spoke to Julia Eyre, Sport Scientist, Strength and Conditioning Coach, and Sport Psychologist in episode 138 of the Science for Sport Podcast. 

Eyre works with TSG Wieseck in Germany and provides them with the mental skills they need to take their performance to the next level.

But why is sport psychology so important? According to Eyre, psychology is the queen bee of sports performance, which influences other aspects of performance such as technical and tactical skills. 

“The fitness, the technical and tactical aspect make 100%, and then the psychology is kind of over that is an umbrella of the brain and the nervous system,” Eyre said.

In addition to psychology’s clear importance to performance, Eyre believes that the role of sport psychology will only increase in the future. 

“Sports will become more psychological, a lot more mental and cognitive than anything else in the next years, because things can only get so fast and so physical before they also get mental,” Eyre said.

So with that in mind, it’s important to equip yourself with the skills needed to perform optimally both now and in the future.

What are those skills? Fortunately, Eyre has narrowed it down to a top three, which you can focus on to get an immediate performance benefit.

Firstly you have self-talk. Now the first thing that pops into my head when I hear this is a team of cheerleaders who are there to motivate me all day. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works.

Instead, there’s a constant monologue in your head, it’s not always under conscious control and it can cause some serious issues. But how do you get it under control?

Before you start trying to use positive self-talk, it’s important to see how much of the internal monologue is already positive.

Eyre recommends using a coin trick. Specifically, you have coins in your pocket, and every time you speak positively to yourself, you move a coin to the right pocket. Negative and it goes left. At the end of a given time period, you check your pockets to see exactly how positive you are.

If you are negative in your self-talk, then you can start to target interventions to improve this. Eyre provides more details in a case study in the podcast as to how you can achieve this. 

The second tip Eyre gives is to track and optimise recovery.

This could mean cheap and easy methods like monitoring sleep at the simple end or complex methods like heart rate variability (HRV) at the other end of the spectrum.

How does this relate to psychology? According to Eyre, the integration of the brain and body is essential to long-term health and performance.

“Those things are really important because they keep us mentally and physically healthy over the long run. And that’s a point where psychology really shows itself as being integrated with the brain and the body,” Eyre said.

So with that in mind, a simple start would be to track your sleep time and quality.

The last trick Eyre has up her sleeve is communication. This sounds obvious, but it can have a massive impact on your sporting performance.

Effective communication with the staff around you can help you to get to the bottom of any issues and allow you to work together on improving your psychological state.

“Athletes need to be able to clearly communicate how they’re doing, what they need to focus on, and where they’re struggling. Being able to communicate those things precisely in a way that makes sense so that something can be done about it is essential,” Eyre said.

So there you have it, three focus points that can help you improve your sporting performance in just minutes. 

My advice would be to take three minutes for every one of these tips, and scribble down where you currently are with each of them, and how you can improve them in the coming week. By working actively to improve these skills you will not only improve performance in the short term but be robust to psychological challenges in the future too.

If you want to listen to the full podcast, including a case study where Eyre takes you through exactly how she would help athletes through these factors, hit the link below!

The post Episode 139. Three psychological hacks to improve performance today – Julia Eyre appeared first on Science for Sport.

In episode 140, Tom Watkins, High Performance Manager at Fiji Rugby League, joins us.

Specifically Tom will be looking at:

• Demands of tournament rugby
• How to manage players arriving from various clubs
• In tournament gym sessions
• Week planning

Have you ever wondered how elite teams prepare physically for highly demanding long-duration tournaments? I for one love hearing the secrets which drive success for elite-level teams.

That’s why we asked Tom Watkins to join us on the Science for Sport Podcast.

Watkins is the high-performance manager of the Fiji Rugby League team, who made it to the quarter-finals of the recent rugby league World Cup. He is also the Head of Performance at Athletes Authority, one of Australia’s leading athletic development facilities. 

With a wealth of experience to his name, we wanted to hear how he helps the physical mountains that are Fijian rugby league players to perform optimally. 

Firstly we need to look at what rugby league players need during a match, as this is different from many other sports, including rugby union. 

Obviously, rugby is known for massive hits and the necessity to have super-human strength, but rugby league is more than just smashing into massive blokes.

“They need to be able to compete over a ninety-minute period. So obviously they need to have some sort of a rugby capacity and base,” Watkins said.

Next to this massive aerobic capacity, they’ll also need upper-echelon repeated sprint ability.

“It’s really being able to repeat high-intensity efforts or those anaerobic efforts over and over again in the moments that matter,” Watkins said.

That means that when designing a program, they need a diverse range of physiological adaptations which allow them to perform optimally throughout the tournament.

“They sort of need a bit of everything, but really a strength and power game underpinned by some aerobic really aerobic capacity and then the ability to repeat high-speed efforts,” Watkins said.

So how do they develop that strength and power? Watkins generously shared some key methods he used to keep things simple, but also allow the players to produce massive power outputs.

“So from a power development standpoint, we looked at doing some contrast stuff. We got the guys that could and had experience power cleaning and then we’d paired that up with a standing broad jump where they could really express a lot of force into the ground,” Watkins said.

Watkins also mentioned that the power clean was often switched for a loaded jump if the athletes in question could not perform Olympic lifts.

“Then obviously we went into our key lift, where we would squat, with some kind of vertical vector jump to kind of pair that up nicely,” Watkins said.

Obviously, these athletes need some serious upper-body strength and power too, again, Watkins has us covered.

“From there an upper body perspective, bench press contrasted with some supine med ball throws, where we really encouraged a partner drop so they could load and explode and utilise that stress shortening cycle,” Watkins said.

So as you can see, the focus was on big bang-for-your-buck exercises, using contrast training to elicit a potentiation effect and therefore further improve outputs.

But how was this combined with the important aerobic and anaerobic adaptations Watkins mentioned earlier? 

Well, Watkins gives us the low-down on exactly how he structures a training week so that the players are match-ready. So if you want to know exactly how he planned the training week, fitting together this incredibly complex puzzle, hit the link below to listen to the full podcast!

The post Episode 140. How to prepare for a Rugby World Cup – Tom Watson appeared first on Science for Sport.

In episode 141, David Jackson, Master Instructor at The Oxygen Advantage, joins us.

Specifically David will be looking at:

• What nasal breathing is
• Why people should perform nasal breathing
• How to incorperate this into your life

Breathing is pretty simple, right? Breathe in and out, and repeat for as long as possible. Well, it turns out, many people are doing it all wrong. Well, maybe not wrong, as you’re alive reading this, but at least suboptimally.

That’s why we wanted to speak to David Jackson to hear his thoughts on the importance of breathing well, and of course how to do it properly.

Jackson is a former professional rugby player who, since his playing days, has become an accredited Strength and Conditioning Coach, and is now a master breathing coach with Oxygen Advantage.

Jackson kicks off our interview by telling the story of the head injury which ended his career. It turns out that after his injury, his breathing test scores left a lot to be desired.

“I scored very badly like I was in a category of severe asthmatic and I was like, I’ve never had a problem with my breathing. I’ve never had asthma, what’s going on? I had a suspicion that my brain injury will have affected my breathing,” Jackson said.

So that led the Englishman to investigate further, fast-forward to today, and he’s using the knowledge found in his investigations to help others improve their breathing.

But why is breathing so important? Well, it turns out that next to the obvious fact that oxygen drives aerobic respiration, there may be some mechanical dysfunction related to poor breathing too.

“Keeping the ribs out is keeping tension or stretch on the diaphragm. That then affects the tissues such as the psoas major and quadratus lumborum they’re all attached to the diaphragm. So we get issues around the lower back, around the spine and rib cage that will affect your shoulder by position and your pelvis, Jackson said.

So is breathing going to be a one-stop shop to cure all your ailments? Maybe not, but apparently it could be an easy aspect of movement to work on, with very limited downsides

“We get like all these potential issues around some movement dysfunctions, and not that breathing cures all things, but it might be something to look at and I experience is quite easy to address,” Jackson said.

So what does he recommend to improve breathing? Well firstly, he’s a big proponent of nose breathing, as opposed to mouth breathing.

“The mouth doesn’t provide the protection, the filtration system, all those hairs within the nose,” Jackson said.

Next to this, the nose provides more resistance than an open mouth, which has a knock-on effect on the diaphragm.

“Resistance allows a better connection to the diaphragm. It gives your diaphragm something to pull against when you have very little resistance,” Jackson said.

This shallow type of breath limits the amount of oxygen you can get into the lungs.

“That’s not efficient in terms of getting oxygen into the lungs especially low down where we’ve got the greatest density of alveoli,” Jackson said

Based on this it appears that shallow mouth-breathing is the type of breath that we want to avoid, but what should our breathing look like?

“In terms of the mechanics, it looks like a three-dimensional expansion of the rib cage. So you’re going to expand front to back and also side to side. So three-dimensionally expanding that rib cage,” Jackson said.

But getting to this stage might be a bit tricky at first, it was for Jackson at least.

“If like me, you got into some poor breathing habits and you switch to nose breathing and you try and go out for a run, I couldn’t get to the end of my road, which is like 50 metres away,” Jackson said.

So definitely don’t be disheartened if it doesn’t work to start with, this is trainable, and with time you can improve. 

How do you train it? Well, for that you’re going to have to listen to the full podcast. It’s a bumper forty-minute episode, with loads of fantastic advice as to how you can improve your breathing and ultimately sport performance.

Hit this link to improve your breathing today!

The post Episode 141. Are you breathing wrong? – David Jackson appeared first on Science for Sport.

In episode 142, Tanno de Pender, International Powerlifter and S&C Coach at TeamNL, joins us.

Specifically Tanno will be looking at:

• What powerlifting is and how to train for it
• What other sports can learn from powerlifting

Have you ever seen those super-human meathead athletes in lycra lifting seemingly impossible weights and thought “I could probably learn something from them”? If you’ve not, you’ve probably never seen powerlifting.

The sport is strength in its purest form, and there are a tonne of lessons that the rest of the sporting world can learn from these colossal feats of force production.

With this in mind, we invited Tanno de Pender to join us on the Science for Sport Podcast. Tanno is not only the Strength and Conditioning Coach for the Dutch Track Cycling Team but also a world-class powerlifter himself.

This combination makes him a great person to listen to when it comes to applying the lessons learned from powerlifting to other sports.

So before we get kicked off with exactly what other athletes can learn from powerlifting, it’s important to get to grips with what the sport is.

“Powerlifting exists in three different disciplines. So we have the squat, the deadlift, and the bench press. Within the competition, we get three attempts per lift in front of a jury to try and lift as much weight as possible,” de Pender said.

So to do this, powerlifters will need some serious muscle, but because of weight classes, hypertrophy can’t be the only adaptation that powerlifters look for. Of course, this is an aspect that many sports have in common.

“Strength is, of course, it’s a mixture of physiological development, it’s a mixture of neurological adaptation, and it’s a mixture of your ability to produce force based on the muscle mass that you have,” de Pender said.

So when it comes to developing this strength, powerlifters have a special advantage compared to other sports. Their sport is exclusively lifting weights.

“One of the unique perspectives I think you can get from a powerlifting background is the ability to control exercise variables to a very large degree, something that is definitely not possible in team sports.

What is the advantage of this? Well, crucially you know exactly how much you did, and where any fatigue comes from.

“I think it gives you a deepened understanding of being able to play around with those variables,” de Pender said.

This brings up one key lesson that other sports can learn from Powerlifting: Monitor workload well.

Obviously, in powerlifting, the fact that there is limited or no workload outside of lifting weights makes things easier, but if other sports can apply the same principles to their practice, there could be some big performance improvements.

“Modelling your workload is very important and you can do that in powerlifting in a very simplistic way. That basic understanding opens up some doors, especially if you’re able to bring this also to a sport setting which comes with many more challenges,” de Pender said.

Next to workload monitoring, de Pender thinks that the detailed eye that is needed to improve exercise technique in powerlifting is highly transferable to other sports.

“Take a couple of moments and really dial in what good technique. So things such as movement, efficiency, being able to keep your bar path in check, and what kind of cueing you would be able to use to reinforce those moving patterns. I think these are very valuable things that are not as emphasised in many team sports,” de Pender said.

This technique emphasis can easily be extrapolated to on-pitch movement, though the big Dutchman does appreciate that team sports don’t have the same one-on-one training luxury which powerlifting often does.

“Individual attention is much more challenging within group settings than it is in individual coaching,” de Pender said.

But maybe this is something that clubs and organisations could look to improve on in the future. Especially given the relative cost of coaches compared to, for example, Premier League Footballer salaries.

So there you have it, some great lessons that every sport can take from the world of powerlifting.

If you want to hear more from de Pender, including a tonne more great advice for athletes and coaches working in other sports, hit the link below to listen to the full episode.

The post Episode 142. What can the rest of the world learn from powerlifting? – Tanno de Pender appeared first on Science for Sport.

In episode 144, Luka Milanovic, Head of S&C at the Croatian Football Federation, joins us.

Specifically Luka will be looking at:

• How Croatia overperform with a population of only 4 million
• How Croatia used the gym during the world cup
• How recovery was used

Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the closed gym doors at the World Cup? I have, and that’s why we asked Luka Milanovic to join us on the Science for Sport Podcast.

Milanovic is an Associate Professor at the University of Zagreb and pulls upon his twenty-four years of coaching experience in his role as the Head of Strength and Conditioning with the Croatian National Football Team. The very same Croatian team which lost in the final to France in 2018, and finished third in 2022, while having a tiny population of just over three million people. So what makes the Croatians so successful? According to Milanovic, it’s resilience.

“It is not easy to grow up in Croatia because you need to develop some kind of resilience. You need to be resilient in your classroom, in your locker room, in your street to be able to survive,” Milanovic said. Next to this, physical activity is a massive part of everyday life.

“We are fortunate enough that our kids are still playing a lot outside,  they are involved in biking five to ten kilometres per day. Practically all of our players now in the national team grew up playing outside a lot, and I’m confident that that helped them to develop,” Milanovic said.

Before we kick off with the football talk (pun intended), including the fascinating insights into life at the World Cup, it’s important to frame the context of the latest World Cup, which is vastly different from previous years.

“It was a different World Cup than, for example, the last one, especially in terms of the schedule. It was right in the middle of the season. So some players played only twenty or twenty-five games, which is actually perfect for us because the last World Cup in Russia was like 50 to 60 games per player,” Milanovic said.

This means that fatigue levels before the competition kicked off were far lower than in world cups which have been traditionally played at the end of a season. When it comes to monitoring that fatigue, Milanovic places a large importance on paying attention to what his players are telling him, both verbally and non-verbally. Next to the use of traditional data, of course.

“We make our decisions based not only on numbers, but we like to view data as eyes, ears, numbers in that order,” Milanovic said.

This is not to say that hard data is unimportant, just that data can also be gained from simply talking with and listening to the players. That hard data can be wide-ranging, as before the start of the national team training camp, the coaches are busy collecting mountains of data from each player.

“So before the competition, we gather all of the information from the players directly, but also from their personal trainers, and from the clubs. We get the reports from the last month so that we know what was going on,” Milanovic said. Interestingly, the data that is collected is individualised to each player based on their wants and needs. Milanovic gives the example of one player who used to wear a sleep-tracking device, only to stop with it a year later.

“Now he says, I don’t want to wear a ring because that’s too much for me. I think I sleep well. And then if I wake up in the morning and see the report, okay, I didn’t get enough deep sleep stuff that is going to mess me up, you know?” Milanovic said. In this way, there are no compulsory methods of data collection, just a discussion with the player as to what they prefer and how the staff can help them.

But what about the gym? Well, it turns out that the same individualised approach was taken for the gym-based sessions too.

“In these 36 (World Cup) days, we had 30 individual gym sessions in the morning. Actually, everything that’s off the pitch, it’s extremely individualised and it’s not mandatory,” Milanovic said. Obviously, this is a massive insight and a complement to the players who are able to be a massive part of their own process. But was it the case that everyone skipped the gym and took a lie in? Absolutely not.

“Out of 26 players on average we had 18 players coming in. So not always 18 players every day, but on average 18 players in the gym,” Milanovic said.

But what actually happens in those sessions? Well, again, that’s highly individual.

“It’s such a wide range of programs, from low-intensity muscular endurance type of programs to high-intensity power programs, for example, and even match day for some players. So such an extremely wide variety of programmes, but everything is individualised,” Milanovic said.

So there you have it, behind the scenes at the World Cup, it’s a highly individualised approach looking to ensure each player is ready for performance when called upon.

If you’re interested in hearing the full podcast, including loads more details on how Milanovic trained the Croatian National Football Team at the World Cup, hit the link below to listen to the whole interview.

The post Episode 144. S&C Secrets Helping Croatia at the World Cup – Luka Milanovic appeared first on Science for Sport.