ASCA Podcast Joseph Coyne

Nathan Spencer is an innovative and passionate practitioner with over 10 years experience developing and coordinating cutting edge strength and conditioning, sports science support and end stage rehabilitation service to elite athletes across the world at the professional level. Currently the Strength & Power Coach at the St. George Illawarra Dragons in the NRL, Nathan has worked extensively in both rugby league and basketball both domestically and internationally. Nathan has held roles at the Wests Tigers, Illawarra Hawks, New South Wales Institute of Sport and Orlando Magic.

QUOTES
“It was an epiphany moment when you think back to what we are taught and it is a bit more old school periodization; whereas the influence of CBAs, 3 games a week, TV deals etc, our ability to make decisions on training periodization are dictated by schedule which is dictated by money”
“In the professional basketball environment, frequency of strength and power work wins out so the initial method was to try and get 2 sessions in a week in season”
“The luggage crews with the airlines did not like us when we would travel with around 400kg of weight and bars when we went on the road”
“We used CMJ eccentric peak velocity as a marker of whether the athletes were putting in and jumping with intent”
“When you are measuring things with force plates, you always stick to the source of truth which is force and time”
“Most of us would assume that after an activity that is high intensity in nature, it is fatiguing, not potentiating, but the fatiguing response typically occurs a day or two later so how you capitalise on that potentiation is the next question”

SHOWNOTES
1) Nathan’s journey from UNSW undergrad to the NBA and back to professional rugby league
2) Strength and power periodization and programming in a heavily congested competition schedule
3) What to focus on after games in NBA for strength and power work and what these sessions would look like at the Orlando Magic
4) Monitoring neuromuscular responses to games from a CMJ and how these responses changed strength & power prescription
5) The metrics to focus on when using the CMJ and force plates to monitor neuromuscular response
6) The differences between pushing isometrics (overcoming) and holding isometrics (yielding) and their use in the NBA strength & power work
7) Adapting and taking what worked in the NBA to an different sport like Waterpolo
8) How to make this model work of monitoring responses and adapting strength & power work for athletes if you do not have force plates

PEOPLE MENTIONED
Alex Natera
Julian Jones
Beau Ryan
Caitlin Foord
Terence Ross
Aaron Gordon

Tim Suchomel has a PhD in Sport Physiology and Performance from East Tennessee State University. He is currently an associate professor of exercise science and the program director for the Sport Physiology and Performance Coaching graduate program at Carroll University. In addition to his teaching, Tim is the Director of the Carroll University Sport Performance Institute (CUSPI) and works as a human performance coach with several teams. He has published 1 book, 10 book chapters and over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles on topics that include weightlifting movements and their derivatives, strength and power development, and athlete monitoring and was named the 2022 National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) Terry J. Housh Outstanding Young Investigator of the Year. Tim is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist with Distinction (CSCS,*D) and Registered Strength and Conditioning Coach (RSCC) through the NSCA and a Level I Performance Coach through USA Weightlifting.

QUOTES
“Accentuated Eccentric Loading (AEL) is prescribing an additional load that we can handle in the eccentric load before removing it in the concentric phase, and the other thing that has to be involved is pairing the eccentric and concentric phase so there is no delay between them”
“The eccentric duration makes a big difference in the adaptation you will get with AEL”
“If you were chasing strength from a loading standpoint, the gap between what is on the bar and what is on the weight releasers should be relatively small; however if I have a wider gap, that may favor RFD and power production”
“With AEL, I would question is does the individual have the capacity to do it and do you need AEL on every repetition?”
“One of things I would tell people first and foremost is when you are going to implement AEL 1) you don’t have to do it with everything and you shouldn’t be doing it with everything and 2) you’re probably not going to be doing this over consecutive training blocks for a long period of time"

SHOWNOTES
1) The update on what Tim’s has been up to since our last episode (#31)
2) The ins and outs of Accentuated Eccentric Loading (AEL) and the benefits of using AEL
3) Why it is not always necessary to go supramaximal with athletes doing AEL and maintaining natural movement speed
4) The pros and cons of increasing the eccentric contraction duration e.g., tempo during training
5) AEL programming recommendations to target different training goals (e.g., hypertrophy, strength)
6) Practical advice for implementing AEL with weight releasers, dumbbells or other tools and the best upper body exercise variations for AEL
7) Different repetition schemes for AEL, moderating the influence on fatigue and why flywheel training is not necessarily AEL
8) Key aspects to programming AEL for athletes and factors that influence the time course of recovery for AEL
9) The benefits of keeping training simple for the vast majority of athletes and understanding the underpinning characteristics of how athletes achieve physical performances

PEOPLE MENTIONED
Jeremy Sheppard
John Wagle
John Hughes

Brendan Inkster obtained a Masters degree from the University of Technology – Sydney researching applied biomechanics and then went on to work with the Manly Sea Eagles (NRL) in rehabilitation and sports science. After a stint with the New Zealand Warriors (NRL), Brendan is now working for the Parramatta Eels (NRL) where he has gone from the rehabilitation space to heading up their pathways and women’s performance programs. Brendan is an accredited ASCA Elite L3 S&C Coach. During his 16 years in the NRL his passion for rehabilitation has never ceased, always looking for ways to improve player outcomes. When not training the Eels, Brendan has a keen interest in baseball & soccer and helping schools with their high-performance education programs.

QUOTES
"The basic model of rehabilitation has evolved for me from just supporting a physiotherapist with some running outside of the gym"
"When resources are not available, do you need a scan? No, but from an NRL perspective, I believe there is merit to it on almost all occasions"
"At the end of the day, the athlete is very accountable for the part they play in their own rehabilitation"
"I am a big believer in that you should do at least a week and preferably two weeks of normal training before you start of playing again"
"What does the normal week look like? Because if that is what they are used to doing they can probably do that in a rehabilitation schedule"
"You can have a high load metabolically and a high load neurally and the main thing you have to remember is just don’t put two high load days back to back”

SHOWNOTES
1) Brendan’s back story and how he got his start in professional rugby league
2) The evolution of the rehabilitation model in the NRL, interaction between different staff and the scan or no scan debate
3) The good and the bad of current return to play systems in rugby league
4) Roles and responsibilities in the rehabilitation and the interaction between a general S&C and a rehabilitation S&C
5) Consulting and including athletes in developing a rehabilitation plan
6) Roadblocks and traps in a rehabilitation process, including managing coach expectations, fast-tracking players and one person having to do it all
7) The most challenging rehabilitation in Brendan’s experience
8) Setting up a rehabilitation program for players, high-low days and aligning the program with the NRL squad
9) Balancing out physiotherapy exercises with performance programming
10) Metrics and data to focus on during a rehabilitation and appropriate exit criteria to return to play, including advantages to giving the player the final say

PEOPLE MENTIONED
Aaron Murphy
Donny Singe
Balin Cupples
Roger Tuivasa Sheck

Gavin Pratt is currently the Director of Strength & Conditioning for the UFC Performance Institute in Las Vegas. He is an accredited ASCA Elite L3 coach and holds a Masters in Exercise Science (Strength & Conditioning) from Edith Cowan University. Prior to this role, he was the Performance Manager at EXOS in Shanghai, China. This involved working with multiple Olympic sports in preparation for the 2018 National Games, after which he then focused on assisting in the development of the country’s surfing program in preparation for the Asian and Olympic games. Gavin was also awarded the ASCA “Mentor Coach of the Year” in 2021 for his work with ASCA L1 & L2 coaches around the world.

QUOTES
“If we miss training the neck, we miss training a whole part of trunk-neck-head coupling”
“We are not just giving any random neck exercises, it is actually in the force vector they are deficient in”
"In MMA, strikes happen in around 300ms and as fast as 100ms with forces up to 10-40g”
“We have something called an MMA warm up: movement, mobilisation, activation”
“Another reason we use static neck exercises to start is to reinforce good posture”
“If we have them twice a week, we need to accumulate at least that average force in a fight absorbed across the week”

SHOWNOTES
1) Gavin’s journey from TV to strength and conditioning at the UFC
2) The benefits of neck strength for injury prevention in grappling and the trunk-neck-head couple
3) Different force vectors coaches should be concerned with neck strength and the neck strength matrix
4) How to test neck strength with a fixed frame dynamometer, and benefits and drawbacks of different body positions when testing
5) Practical examples of applying the neck strength matrix with a flexion deficiency
6) Reverse engineering neck strength from force absorption in MMA fights and differences in typical wrestler and striker neck strength profiles
7) Other assessments used by the UFC Performance Institute to determine athlete needs
8) The benefits of athlete feedback to improve your performance as a strength & conditioning coach

PEOPLE MENTIONED
Bo Sandoval
Brett Grelle

Dr Lachlan James is a Senior Lecturer, Sport Scientist, Course Coordinator of the Master of Strength and Conditioning degree at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia, and an ASCA Professional L2 coach. He has published over 40 peer reviewed articles including 25 as first or senior author. Lachlan currently supervises 7 PhD students with research projects in the AFL, Super Rugby, Queensland Academy of Sport, the A-League and with VALD Performance. Prior to entering academia, he spent 10 years in professional practice as a strength and conditioning coach and applied sport scientist.

QUOTES
“The problem we are trying to solve is reducing the vast array of metrics we have available to us from technology down to just a few key ones”
“Choose the metric in any cluster that is more reliable and is most interpretable by the end user”
“Whatever variable we can get reliable at 100ms in the IMTP, which is typically force at 100ms, is the one I will take”
“The reality is force at a certain timepoint, RFD and impulse all contain the same information but the reliability differs markedly”
“If isometric strength doesn’t track heavy dynamic strength changes, and you are trying to use it to inform more heavy dynamic strength interventions from something like the DSI, then it might not respond in the way you think”
“You have to give feedback on contact time after each rep if assessing reactive strength with a drop jump or 10-5”

SHOWNOTES
1) Lachlan’s pathway to becoming a world leading strength researcher at LaTrobe University
2) Strength and power assessments and the vast array of metrics available for practitioners
3) Dimension reduction and making sense of the various clusters of metrics available
4) Picking between the Iso Squat and IMTP as the test of choice for lower body maximal isometric strength and the advantages of looking at net force
5) The importance of set up in the maximal isometric strength tests
6) Choosing between net force at 100ms, RFD or impulse?
7) Key metrics in the countermovement jump, unilateral variations and eccentric measures
8) What strength domains or qualities actually exist? The 5 strength qualities and their relationship to one another
9) Issues with the Dynamic Strength Index
10) Feasibility of assessing the different strength qualities and solutions with large squads of athletes
11) The effect of initial strength on strength training adaptations and the merging of strength qualities in weaker athletes

PEOPLE MENTIONED
Vince Kelly
Warren Young
Greg Haff
Chris Bishop

Mike McGurn is Head of Athletic Performance at Queens University in Belfast. He has a BSc in Sports Science from Temple University in Philadelphia, U.S.A. and an ASCA Professional L2 accreditation. Mike has worked for over 20 years in Professional Sports as a S+C coach preparing athletes and players for 3 World cups, 3 Olympics, EPL, Commonwealth Games, Boxing, and many other sports. In that time winning 2 World Titles in 2 different sports as well as having the prestigious honour of training 3 National Senior Irish Teams in 3 different codes. His area of speciality is Olympic lifting and strength development in the gym along with energy system development on the pitch. Mike presents ASCA courses in Ireland, Malta and Poland as well as delivering lectures and talks in the USA, UK, Germany, and wider Europe.

QUOTES
"All they had was rugby league, tattoos and weight training”
“Firstly, what does an athlete need to be fit for purpose? Then what does the sport demand?”
“We need to look at the three P’s in athlete preparation: position, pattern and power”
“You can’t fake fitness and you can’t fake strength”
“Look at what is happening in the sport and in hard training blocks and stay away from that in your strength work”
“Don’t set your athletes up to get gold medals in the gym and then a bronze on the weekend in competition”

SHOWNOTES
1) Mike’s journey from Ireland to US collegiate running to elite S&C in field sports
2) The myth of sport specific training and differences between considering strength and energy system specificity for sports
3) Building athletes to be fit for purpose based on demands of their sport
4) The difference between sport specific and sport relevance with case studies of surfing and sprinting
5) Dynamic correspondence, force vectors and understanding what the sport is giving the athletes to be able to “fill in the blanks”
6) Periodisation differences between general and specifc prep
7) The importance of being comfortable with all the training you prescribe as an S&C
8) The influence Dan Baker has had on Mike’s coaching career

PEOPLE MENTIONED
David Boyle
Kelvin Giles
Yuri Verkoshansky
Dan Baker
Dan John
Joe Kenn
Paul Sculthorpe