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Jesse Miller
Melbourne, Australia
Strength and Conditioning Coach and Personal trainer
Bachelor of Human Movement and Exercise Science
ASCA Level 2
AWF Level 1
ARTICLES
As a coach, one of my key challenges is ensuring my clients are adjusting their training loads to cope with the external stressors in their life. Whether your stress stems from a deadline at work, an argument with your partner, a calorie deficit, poor sleep or even your physical training, each of these creates a similar response in the body which combines to add to what we refer to as allostatic load. Allostatic load is the sum of all of the external stressors that cause our body to deviate from homeostasis. Too little external stress and we don’t grow, too ...
Most sports require athletes to possess well developed
aerobic systems as well as high levels of strength and power. Training for both
of these systems at once is referred to as concurrent training and with poor management,
this can lead to lack of recovery, overtraining and an interference effect where
training for one system hinders performance of another system. Early research from
Hickson (1980) found that strength performance was hindered during concurrent training
programs and this has since been backed up both anecdotally and through further
research. This interference effect explains why historically, a large amount of
gym goers avoid cardio and why many endurance athletes view strength ...
Speed is one of the most sought after qualities in sport. It
is often the game changer in pivotal moments with faster soccer athletes even
being shown to score more frequently (1). There is a long held belief among
many coaches that speed is mainly a genetic quality that an athlete simply is
or isn't blessed with. These beliefs have led to the prioritisation of recruiting
and trading for speed rather than training for it. Whilst there is definitely truth
to the genetic argument, with a well structured program incorporating sprints, jumps
and weightlifting, any athlete has the ability to improve their speed. This
article will focus on ...
Agility is a multifaceted physical quality requiring both physical and cognitive qualities. Typically sports require cognitive input to respond to an opponent or other stimuli (AFL, rugby, soccer, tennis, etc.), whilst some sports simply require change of direction ability (such as a batsman turning to go for a 2nd run in cricket). Looking at the factors that contribute to agility (figure. 1), we can see that change of direction speed (C.O.D.S) encompasses the physical aspects, whilst the cognitive and perceptual factors affect how well we can utilise the physical qualities within chaotic sporting situations.
Fig.1 Determinants of agility (Sheppard ...
In an athletes early stages of growth and athletic development, almost anything we do in the gym will have at least some sort of positive transfer to the sporting arena. For example, a weak athlete who builds lower body strength will almost certainly improve their speed without doing any sprint specific training. However as the athletes’ strength and power develops we are required to expose the athlete to ‘special’ exercises designed to maximise a positive transfer to performance in a given event.
Case study: A 27 year old, 80kg rugby athlete with a 1RM Deadlift of 180kg
If this athlete focuses on ...