Even though I am a Strength & Conditioning Coach, I would say that I have as great, if not a greater passion for skill development. As a coach I endeavor to have athletes express strength and power so that they transfer this to sport-specific situations.

A simple ball passing game much like football, soccer, or handball. Make FRC into some kind of game. Random pieces doing things that don't make sense. Mar 07, 2017 Game sense for teaching and coaching. The Game Sense Conference 2013 at The University of Sydney will continue this regionally focused.

I am forever looking at their sporting movements, identifying what movements or physical characteristics need enhancing and then designing methods to allow these changes to emerge. Take a Judoka who we would consider being skilful, for example Teddy Riner, and then him make them do a skill in a different context and we will soon see it fall apart. Therefore, skill is not a characteristic of that individual, they cannot be “skilful”, but rather they are “skilful in a specific situation or scenario”. This article is written primarily for developmental coaches and is based on the philosophy I’ve had for some time which looks at the relevance of “Uchikomi” in developing judo throwing skill, or rather how it perhaps makes athletes worse at throwing. A very successful coach said to me a few days ago “5 million Japanese can’t be wrong” yet I believe after about an hour of discussion I showed that they probably were, and at the very least there are likely much better methods. Uchikomi all stems from a reductionist approach to problem solving and I hope that after reading this article, you reflect on what you “believe” to be true and really challenge your biases.

Summary in case you are short on time: • This article is deliberately extreme to force you to critically think about the dogma and traditional approach of skill development in martial arts • There is not a “one-size” fits all technique for all athletes • Reducing skills down to their component parts using closed drills, so that they will transfer into the whole skill during dynamic, open situations is unlikely to be successful. • Manipulating the environment and the task will allow the athlete to find an individual movement solution to a task. A reductionist way of thinking would be to break down the component parts of a system, increase the capacity of these component parts and then expect the whole system to operate better as a whole – this may be partly true in engineering but is seldom the case in biological organisms like humans. Let me use this example: Bodybuilders will use reductionist methods to target individual muscles.

They will use machines to isolate single joints and put the most mechanical tensions across a muscle to cause the greatest amount of fibre damage and optimise growth potential of that muscle. This works really well, individual muscles increase dramatically in size and in their isolated strength on that specific machine or exercise.

We then look at Strongman Competitors who follow a global approach to training movements, such as pulling trucks, carrying stones, throwing kegs and so on. They focus the majority of their training on improving the strength and skill of global movements as they understand that the synchronisation of how the body works to produce this strength is more important than focusing on increasing the individual strength of each muscle. Of course if they have a weak link this will limit them, but their primary strategy is the global movement first. If we ask strongmen and bodybuilders to complete a new, novel task such as dragging a heavy chain across a car park, despite the bodybuilder having trained each and every muscle to be big and strong, the strongman’s muscles recognise and synchronise the movement better and will be more successful in moving the heavy chain. Hopefully this has given you some reference as to how breaking things into their component parts might logically make sense, however when fitting it back into a skill, they body will likely recognise them as two distinctly different tasks and the improvement will not happen as expected. Now back to how this relates to Judo skill training.

The “Uchikomi” I am referring to is the systemic bad habit we have in this country of completing the following sequence: • Preparing the attack by destabilising you opponent (breaking balance) • Fitting into the shape of the throw • Then either stopping once entered or lifting your partner up slighting, but NOT throwing them. Why do we not throw at the end and instead stop? To me it makes no sense and I have asked this to almost every coach and here are some answers I get: “We only use Uchikomi to warm up.” My Response: “Then why not do a few forward rolls, a few diving forward rolls and then we would be prepared to be rolled over by the athlete throwing? Surely this is a better warm up for actual judo, essentially then uchikomi is preparing you to turn in and stop.” We use Uchikomi to improve the entry into the throw so that they are in the correct position. “Unless they actually throw how do you know it is the correct position, sure it may look good but my Uchikomi looks identical to Koga’s but I sure don’t throw like him?” We use Uchikomi to improve a specific component of the throw, such as their elbow position in Uchi-Mata.

“Why would you think that because Inoue puts his elbow there so must this 15 year old girl with completely physical make up, with different joint lengths, strength, speed, movement skills and so on? Liparteliani utilises a very different movement solution and it is just as effective.” We use Uchikomi to emphasise a component of the throw, for example the high pull to break their balance prior to throwing.

“Who decided it should be done like that? Perhaps that person had limited shoulder range, or maybe too much? Just because it was effective for the one person to do it that way doesn’t make it effective for everyone.” We use Uchikomi to correct their mechanics, for example the direction their feet are pointing. “Correct mechanics? Are Michael Johnson’s 200m and 400m running mechanics textbook?

Who decided what is correct? Surely if it allows the individual to achieve their desired outcome i.e. Throw someone then it is correct? I agree it could be more efficient but even this is debatable.” There are many more arguments but most follow the same, in my opinion flawed, philosophy that there is apparently a correct technique which has a very specific technical model of what is right and what is wrong; and I believe this is, for the most part, nonsense! Surely, the big, obviously, glaring error with this is that if you practice to break balance, fit in for the shape of the throw and then train yourself to repeatedly STOP and decelerate will solidify this rehearsed pattern and it will likely transfer negatively into your contest judo. Why would we train to decelerate into the throw? Honestly, I’ve done it on the force plate, if you throw the power curve of the throw is totally different than if you do an uchikomi, you must slow down during an uchikomi or at least the way most people do it.

Give it a try, try and continue to accelerate while not throwing your partner. I’m going to present some concepts below which may not change your practice, but will hopefully at least help you to think and to critically evaluate why you coach something in a specific way and whether your interaction with your athlete is actually helpful in “correcting” their technique. Just as a note, I would love for someone to reply and convince me that I’m wrong; because believe me I am more than happy for someone to present evidence to change my opinion. I do not believe enough of us are challenging our practice with critical thinking but rather accepting it because “5 million Japanese can’t be wrong!”. So onto my argument against coaches manually correcting movement “errors” in throws and the use of reductionist methods, such as stopping the athlete throwing and instead drilling the “Uchikomi” of to correct flaws of the components parts of the throw. My 80year old granny can do a straight line “Uchikomi”. I taught her in about 2minutes one day to see if I could teach her the timing for Kouchi Gari for when to sweep the foot “ step back12and sweep”.

It is basically rhythmical dance, so naturally being from Scotland and doing ceilidh dancing her whole life she learned pretty quick. The movement cues a cooperative partner give, moving in a predetermined movement pattern, are so completely different to an evasive partner she picked it up like she was Matsumoto. Performing this “sequence” is much more specific to partner-based dance than opponent-based combat. But let’s make no mistake my granny is not catching anyone in a real evasive situation so women worldwide are safe for now. But I hear you say “ it’s just to get the movement”. No the movement is completely different; in fact, the joint angles, joint velocities, rhythm, timing are nothing alike. Try this, have an athlete perform an uchikomi for whatever throw you want and look at their shin angle and their trunk angle; now have them thrown at 50% effort and then 100% and look at what happens to their shin and trunk angles!

I’m waiting for the argument that all the Japanese drill perfect Uchikomi when children and have amazing technique. This is like saying that everyone who has been to the moon has eaten chickentherefore if you want to go to the moon you need to eat chicken; correlation does not equal causation. If we were to take a sample of Japanese children who have done this huge volume of Uchikomi in Japan for years (assuming this is what they do) and look at those who progressed to start randori/competitive fighting and those who dropped out, I wonder if those children who dropped out and never began practicing against an evasive partner would be able to throw, considering they have “perfect technique”? Sure they can make the shape of a throw, just like my granny can, but that’s only one very simply component of a huge system to throw an evasive opponent. I wonder if all those boxers practicing for hours on a punch back ever get the movement cues and timing to land a punch on a real person in a fight.

We know animals play to develop skills in the animal kingdom; but have you ever seen a monkey drill an imaginary swing from one vine to another but bail before catching? Have you ever seen a lion stalk an antelope, chase it, and then right at the point it where it is about to leap and attack, stop and reflect on whether the mechanics of its approach were successful? Then all the other lions gather round and give it feedback and move its paws and tail around to the “correct” position? No, because the lion doesn’t care if it’s back paw was 2centimeters too close to its right, and it’s tail self-organised to counteract lateral movement to keep it on the correct impact trajectory so it doesn’t care it the end was too fuffy, but it does care if it got a successful outcome – Dinner! Somehow the lions are smart enough to know that every antelope will react in a slightly different way, will be chased across slighting different terrain, in fact it maybe won’t even be an antelope the lion is chasing, and therefore drilling a fixed, closed movement solution to a dynamic, every changing situation it probably of little use. Back to my Granny, here’s the interesting thing though about her; she had a knee operation a few years ago and figured out how to walk again without anyone stopping her midway through her foot stride and saying “ turn your toes slightly in”, or “ bend your knee a bit more” or “ keep your chest up and as you step to keep your shoulders over your hips and base of support”.

What’s even more amazing is that she doesn’t just walk in straight lines either, she can turn left and right, even walk round in circles, she can walk up and down stairs and even walk on different surfaces like grass. She doesn’t need anyone to stop her and correct her from falling over. She did stumble and almost fall over lots at the beginning but her body self-organised and managed to learn that falling over was bad so corrected movement “errors” to stop falling over.

It’s a bit like when a baby learns to walk. It learns to brace through its trunk while crawling, it learns to keep a stable trunk and move at the arms and hips without having to compensate with the spine; this gives it a good posture for standing skills.

Then the muscles of the legs and hips get strengthened moving from all fours to standing usually by squatting and pulling itself up onto some sort of furniture; and then falling over, and then squatting back up again. Then the baby tries to take a step, but can’t quite coordinate all of the movements yet; it can’t coordinate when its left foot moves that its right arm must counteract the rotation forces so it fails and falls over. Then somehow, without coach input (because they can’t speak yet or understand coach instruction) they manage to self-organise and take a few steps. A new world has opened up, one where the environmental variables they must self-organise to overcome are infinite – they start from a new piece of furniture, they try to dodge a different obstacle on the floor, they walk from carpet to wooden floor, they walk in barefoot and then socks, they walk with the TV distracting them, they walk while carrying something in only one hand, they walking while growing a little heavier every day.

They do this all without coach input! They do this all without their mum’s and dad’s stopping them mid-stride to correct the fact that their big toe is pointing out 5degrees too much on their left foot. And this is what’s really amazing; there aren’t any humans we see dragging themselves around the supermarkets asking you to reach things off the top selves for them because “nobody taught me how to stand up and walk” or “nobody corrected my 5degree outward pointing big toe so I just keep falling over”. So how is it that humans can learn to stand, walk, run, jump and do all of these successfully without needing repeated coach intervention, yet they have to be stopped mid-throw to correct an “error” or not allowed to complete a throw in case it doesn’t work and they learn a “bad” pattern? How is it that some humans manage to walk despite their feet turned slightly out, others with their toes slightly in, some even have missing toes; surely this challenges our belief of “perfect technique” and the need for coach correction. Instead, what happens is that the person interacts with their environment and seeks to achieve a task so will self-organise and produce a movement solution to solve the task.

The solution will be completely unique to that individual. In the example of people walking, the environment is the world, it’s the street, it’s the grass and it’s the stairs and the task outcome is walking without falling over. The body will self-organise in the environment to achieve this task. In Judo, the objectives are dominating and leading the grip so that we can throwing and win in newaza.

Based on the above example and a constraints-led approach, it would be effective to develop skills by manipulating environmental variables and manipulating tasks to get the desired changes in technique and achieve our objectives. In such a diverse sport, where scenarios are never identical, the variables such as opponent’s height, opponent’s weight, opponent’s limb lengths, opponent’s limb mass, opponent’s movement skills, friction of the mats, friction of their judogi, plus an infinite number of other variables why have we selected the best approach is to drill set scenarios on a compliant partner? Why do we manually correct individual’s movement when we know every individual will have a slightly different solution to a movement problem, similar to how we all walk slightly differently. Some other example to Global skill development if I you need further convincing are below: When learning to write in school or younger, we begin with a pencil or pen – we do not write “shadow” letters in thin air. We do not stop mid letter to correct our slightly different finger position from the teacher’s giant fingers position. We are given the constraint of lines on the paper and “finger spacing” to help shape the letters. When learning a tennis serve, we begin with a racket and a ball – we do not throw an imaginary ball, swing a real racket and then stop at the point of imaginary impact.

We know that the serve movement may look correct, but does that guarantee that the ball would have gone in the desired direction? This therefore challenges what “good” technique looks like, and poses what effective technique might look like. When learning to play the guitar, we actually need a guitar.

If we play air guitar and make all the “correct” finger movements, sure it may look good but until we actually have the instrument in our hands and hear the sound being produced we will not know if our technique is “correct” despite it looking great. When learning a golf swing, we begin with a golf club and a golf ball – we do not set up a tee with an imaginary ball, swing a real club and stop at the point of impact. We know that the golf swing may look correct, it may be identical to Tiger Woods, but without actually striking the ball we are just guessing if it would have gone where we wanted. Again, this challenges what “good” technique looks like, and that Tiger Woods and Rory Mcllroy both have completely different yet effective swings neither are trying to copy one and other. When teaching horses to show jump it’s difficult to give them verbal feedback or move them into the correct position, usually because their English isn’t up to scratch, or perhaps our horse isn’t so good either. We give them jumps to complete, we manipulate the height, the distance, surface, velocity of approach and angle they approach from and then positively reward them when they get it right. If we watch Jonny Wilkinson practice kicking, would we ever see him set up the ball, walk back for his approach, run up to the ball then as he is about to kick stop just before impact?

No we would not. He would not have any knowledge of whether the set up was correct or not. The ball might look like it is set up correct, his approach is the correct number of steps away, his run approach is great, his leg swing may look excellent; but unless he actually kicks the ball and it travels dead centre between the posts he will not know whether all that “perfect” looking set up was actually effective. In fact, if we compare Jonny Wilkinson to Dan Carter, their ball set up, number of steps, angles, distance, approach speed and every other variable are different, yet both movement solutions are highly effective at producing the desired outcome of putting the ball dead centre of the post. If the ball were to travel only a couple of centimetres to the right or left it might be unperceivable to our coaching eye as to what they have done to skew the kick slightlybut I bet they can feel the different, so would it be possible for us as coaches to correct this technical “error”?

Should we not then be creating situations to allow self-corrections? Ronnie O’Sullivan can strike the cue ball onto a long red and watch it smash dead centre into the top pocket of the snooker table. If we were to watch Ronnie take 100 with the balls in the same positions but hide the balls from our vision so we could only see him moving, we would probably see 100 identical movement patterns to our coaching eye. Yet, it is likely some balls shifted slightly right in the pocket, and some slightly left, therefore there must be some internal variables such as torque he is applying to the cue, or external variables such as speed of the cloth, that Ronnie would be able to feel and likely self-correct. When two identical twins are sent to practice different sports, for example twin A does swimming and twin B does gymnastics, they will develop movement skills related to that sport.

If after several years of training both twins slip on the same sheet of ice they will produces completely different movement solutions to maintain their balance. Their movement solution will be completely unique to each of them based on how their bodies have adapted to their sporting environment.

We should not try to get either twin to copy the other’s solution to staying on balance because we “think” one of the twin’s technique was better than the others. So what am I suggesting? I am suggesting that we remove the concept of a predetermined, correct, one size fits all technical model for a throw.

Instead I am suggesting that there are certain principles which increase the chances of the athlete being successful with the throw, but the way we apply those principles is unique to each of us. Furthermore, I am suggesting that we put the athlete in environments, and the coach designs tasks which promote the desired skill or movement emerging, rather than drilling a pre-programmed skill based on what we think the athlete needs to move and feel.

Here are some examples of how constraints are being used to get the desired skill or behaviour to emerge. When I teach an athlete to squat and they are bending forwards I position them facing the wall, maybe 30cm away and tell them not to touch the wall with their face, chest or any other parts of their body – this forces them to keep an upright posture which is desirable when eventually putting external load through their spine. I don’t say a word, they are the organism, the environment is the wall and the task is not to touch the wall.

To get them deeper into the squat we just put a ball behind them, the environment is then the wall and the ball, and the task is to squat to touch their bum to the ball without touching the wall. I don’t say a word as they will self-organise to achieve this. In the below picture the ball was above parallel to reduce hip impingement flaring up while still putting load through the athlete. Perhaps their knees cave inwards on the squat and we think this might leak power and decide more vertical shins would be better for jump performance due to force vectors, then maybe we put a band around their knees which would require them to push their knees out making them more vertical.

To teach a deadlift, hip-hinge pattern I get them to stand with their back to a door and then move 15cm away from the door. I then ask them to open the door with their bum. They reach back with their hips and push the door. Usually the first few attempts they just round at their back and don’t push their hips back but after 2-3 attempts they get it just fine, then I just keep moving them away from the door until they reach their full hip flexion capacity. Organism is them, door is environment, task is open the door with bum. If we are having the athlete complete broad jumps for horizontal hip power, perhaps to help Ouchi Gari, and they are jumping quite flat, we will put a low hurdle close to their toes which will force them to slightly shift their trajectory more vertical.

Maybe during rehab we need them to quickly recruit their lateral hamstring so we have them rapidly kick the ball but we keep nudging the ball out to the side to change the recruitment pattern. It is that simple, identify the skill you want to see, understand what environmental factors you can modify and then what task will allow that skill to emerge – it’s fun and there are infinite solutions. Also I have stolen all of the above from people who are much smarter than I am but sorry I cannot remember where I saw them, most likely on twitter and other coaches, the broad jump one was Mark Jarvis from the EIS! If you want to change athlete intent in explosive exercises, put down a tape measure (environment) have a few athletes compete against each other (task) and without saying a word they will jump further to win. Slightly different constraint as it’s not about a specific movement skill but a change in behaviour will yield a change in movement, such as sharper shin angles and faster muscular contractions.

If I look at the athlete’s strategy to accelerate in for a throw and the coach and I think there could be more hip involvement, then we might constrain the use of the upper body by having them put a light pole on their back and whip in for the movement. This would increase the demands on the hips and legs to produce the force to accelerate the body as the arms will be eliminated, it’s like taking the arms out of a jump to overload the hips. Perhaps we want more power delivery in a forward throw, such as ippon seoi-nage.

We know that that Power = Force x Velocity so then we have to improve one, or both of those. If we want to improve force, use a heavier person to throw as this will increase the vertical components due to them being heavier. There no need to shout “throw harder” as if they don’t produce more force they won’t throw a heavier person. If they are still not throwing, then constraint a game so their intent is changed, 20 points if they score with ippon seoi-nage, 1 point if they score with anything else, no counters allowed; then quickly progress to counters and so on! If you want to improve an athlete’s ability to destabilise their opponent and create the proper reaction which will actually transfer to an evasive scenario you must think about what factors you can modify and what tasks will promote those skills. Instead of drilling a fixed ouchi-gari into ippon seoi-nage movement on a static or compliant partner, why not tell the opponent they are allowed to counter but only with ura-nage. Now for the attacker to be successful they have to learn to be deceptive, and produce a realistic fake for the ippon seoi-nage to use their opponent momentums to score with the ouchi-gari.

If they do not create a realistic fake they will likely be countered, if their partner pushes forwards to try to dirupt the ouchi gari they will get thrown with the seoi-nage. I can hear you saying, what if their technique is just awful, as I coach I need to reduce it down and drill the basic movement. Well, how many kids have perfect walking technique on day 1? Of course it is way, way off where it needs to be but the body will self-organise to meet the environmental and task demands and will over time correct. It may take innovative coach-led constraints but that part of the fun of coaching and will make the outcome much more transferrable to actual evasive contest judo.

Perhaps you would like to see the athletes you coach attempting to throw more with ashiwaza than with major scoring techniques because you feel this would add a real threat to their combinations. Why not constraint a game and bias the scoring toward the skill you want to see emerge.

20points for any score (yuko, wazari, ippon) with ashi-waza, 3points for a score with a major throw, this will bias their efforts as two ashi-waza score would be 40points and they would need 14 major throws to match thisI know what I would try to develop. Sure you might need to nudge them in the direction which tends to work better for that skill “ maybe try holding closer to the elbow with your sleeve hand and see how that works”, but stripping the skill back to a closed drill with no feedback to when it must eventually work in a dynamic, evasive system is unlikely to transferif it did we’d all be scoring consistent ippons on opponents with foot sweeps! What about improving lower limb stiffness for better power in the throw?

Modify the environment to be less stable or have less friction, if you’re totally nuts you can do it on an ice rink or at the side of a swimming pool, I’d probably go with socks on a normal judo mat to be safe (disclaimer please do not do judo on ice). Less friction, more joint stiffness will be sensed by the body’s sensory system and the body will aim to self-protect by decrease movement variance in the legs. Great for power transfer and not a word need to be said! I saw a fantastic drill by a foreign coach who wanted the athlete he coached to be more comfortable with defending, initiating and countering with hip techniques so he tied a short belt, maybe 18inches to her and her opponent so their hips were always very close.

He then let them fight and postures, hip bracing timing, movement patterns and movement cues from defence to attack emerged. Not a word was said, but she learned how to defend effectively and attack from close range.

Fighting in a 4x4m area, rather than a 8x8m or 10x10m area to increase the opportunities to throw due to more action-reaction opportunities. Sure you can as a coach shout “throw more, come on attack attack attack” but unless the athlete can recognise the correct situation this is unlikely to transfer. My Invoices And Estimates Deluxe 10 Crack. I hope that I have done enough to convince you that a one-size fits all technical model of human movement and specifically judo movement is a flawed way of thinking. I hope that you recognise the potential negative effects of rehearsing a fixed movement pattern for a throw, which assumes opponents will react in the same way, despite us all reacting differently to the same sheet of ice we slip on. Hopefully you have considered that actually knowing if the throw worked or not has a large bearing of whether or not you consider the technique effective, particularly given the fact the until recently Michael Johnson held the 200m and 400m world records despite running very differently than all others.

Most of all I hope I’ve opened your eyes to the world of constraints-led coaching which is much, much more fun than standing shouting the same directions at athletes all day. It is exciting to challenge yourself to truly understand what movement patterns you would like to see emerge and they how to design drills that require very little verbal input but transfer much more to competitive performance.

Edit: Just a short explanation as to why an S&C coach is critically evaluating a technical coach’s practice: • Our primary sportscience and sport medicine objective is to maximise athlete availability for training and competition i.e. Reducing injury and illness. Looking at where there is additional and stress and load put on the body and removing load which doesn’t positively impact performance is a key strategy. If we could remove the thousand or so uchikomi every year, assuming they have no positive impact on performance, would reduce total load and make available more load for training which has large positive impact. • A key outcome coaches are looking for is to throw for scores; and one strategy for this is to improve the physical rate limiters such as strength and power.

However, another key component is throwing mechanics and in my experience this is something we can definitely improve our understanding on. Having a different set of eyes approach the problem from a different perspective, in this case and S&C specialist, looking at the direction the athlete is applying the force in a training drill and comparing this to the desired competition outcome has questioned how transferrable it is to use different mechanics and different muscular actions to positively transfer to a dynamic evasive contest scenario. Thanks for reading and please get in touch if you have a different perspective. I’ve been getting a lot of questions recently about physical “standards” for judo athletes so I’m writing this article as a very simple, very easy to understand resource for coaches, parents and athletes to give some objective numbers to aim for in your training. The Tests We test flexibility, upper and lower body push & pull strength, explosive hip power, upper body muscular endurance, aerobic capacity and anaerobic capacity as these physical qualities underpin our judo specific skills. There are lots more we could test and previously have tested but with our current training philosophy and resources this fulfills pretty much every requirement we need. Additionally we also frequently “invent” measures specific for an elite athlete based on their requirements, such as explosive upper body tests or explosive repeated efforts tests, but this is not covered in this article.

Before we get into our tests, just a little background on why we test from High-Performance Training For Sports From David Joyce & Dan Lewindon. If you haven’t got this book put it on your Christmas list from Santa! • To provide objective information on the effect of the training programmes; • Assessing the impact of a specific intervention strategy; • Assisting with the process of making informed decisions regarding programme manipulation; • Maximising athlete and coach understanding about the needs of the sport; • Effectively using data from new technologies; and • Adding to the growing body of athlete preparation research. Sit & Reach • In bare feet, big toes on right and left legs touching one and other, as well as heels together. Feet flat against the measuring box. • Legs straight, not hyperextended. • Slowly reach forwards as far as possible, pushing a ruler forwards across the measuring box.

When the athletes gets to their end of range the tester counts down 5seconds and records where the athletes fingers are. Rest 60seconds and repeat 3x recording the best score. Squat, Deadlift, Bench Press, Chin Up • This is an Olympic, high bar back squat, below parallel. • This is a Clean Grip (overhand) Deadlift. I coach and cue to to keep a neutral spine, however when going maximal this usually deviates slightly.

When they start rounding we stop the test as we’re trying to measure hip extension strength. • Bench Press. In the bottom position the forearms are perpendicular to the floor, this is how we gauge hand width, no illegally wide hands beyond the rings are allowed. The tester can give a lift off, however the lifter must lower the bar, touch the chest, and push to full elbow lock-out on their own. Also we don’t use any powerlifting arches to shorten the range. Palms facing you/underhand grip.

The athlete must hang for a full 3seconds, in full shoulder flexion with straight arms prior to pulling. The athlete must pull, so that their chin is horizontally and vertically above the bar i.e. The can rest their chin on top of the bar. The then must lower to fully extended arms and shoulder flexion prior to dropping off. No kipping allowed. Broad Jump • Use a measuring tape laid out along the floor, with tape marking the starting line.

• Toes behind the starting line, using arms to assist swing, jump for maximum distance. • The athlete must stick the landing, not slide or take extra steps and they are not allowed to put their hands down to help landing. • The distance is the furthest back point of their heel. Push Ups • Step a metronome to 35 beats per minute. • Tennis ball set directly below the chest. Hands must be stacked directly below shoulders, neutral spine, feet together.

• The athlete must lower chest to tennis ball, nose to floor, touching at the same time before pushing to full arm-lockout and shoulder protraction i.e. A perfect looking push up.

• The athlete touches the ball/nose to floor on 1 beep, and then is at full lock-out at the second beep. • If the athlete deviates from their posture they get 1 warning, if they cannot correct this or they do but make this error again the test is over. • Score is the number of full push ups completed • Just for record, our best is 70 for a man and 51 for a women! Both athletes were injured for several months, phenomenal scores with great form. 2000m Row on Concept II 30sec Row on Concept II We complete these “tests”, or as I call them monitoring, every month. Due to competition/training schedule and injury/illness athletes will likely miss a few tests each year.

We use the results from these tests, along side our deterministic model to individualise training prescription where required. The tests that we use have been selected first and foremost because they test the physical capacities which underpin specific judo skills – the trademarks. Secondly, the tests selected are valid and repeatable; in that they test what we are seeking to test and that from month to month if there is a change we can be confident this is due to a change in physical capacity as opposed to the fact we just performed the test differently.

Third, most judoka have access to the equipment required for the tests so that we can gain a large body of data to inform our training. Fourth, the tests substitute as sessions for the athletes therefore they are not invasive or disruptive to training which helps coach buy-in.

Finally, and this is really important, judo is such a highly technical and tactical sport it is extremely difficult to find any physical test (in my experience) which “predict” or separate elite from super-elite due to the each individual’s super-strengths and their desired fight strategy. For our highest performers we tend to make up a test specific to their demands at the time and repeat it over a block to see change; we also use the performance analysis data to help inform us i.e. Attack density per minute. Therefore the tests presented help shape the culture we (coaches and S&C) desired and help shape the mentality we seek to develop in our athletes. Additionally, we also complete physical screening/profiling 1-2x per year with the objective of injury reduction which Jason our physiotherapy leads on. Some important notes before I start getting hate mail: • These are test for SENIOR judoka and not cadet judoka. Due to the work of great coaches and parents down the pathway, TASS and the home country institutes we are beginning implementing this testing earlier in the pathway i.e.

Aged 17-18 due to the great physical competency of those coming through. • The bodyweight in the top left corner is based off 4-6% above competition fighting weight; this is where most of the Junior & Senior elite players are sitting. Some slightly more and some slightly less. • Limb length plays a massive part in most of the tests, just as it does actual sports performance. For example long arms will likely mean you can lift less load bench press and chin ups, due to greater range of movement, however long arms are likely beneficial in the 2000m row and 30sec Peak Power due to greater acceleration range during the pull.

Limb length also plays a big part in sit & reach and in the push up test, so the changes in scores appear to not be linear between lighter and heavier weight categories. • The benchmarks are take from fully-fit training elite GB judo athletes, both Paralympic and Olympic. By this I mean that the scores are from athletes who are not in a rehab phase as these scores usually skew the benchmarks. For example, our -81kg male has been out with a knee injury and put about 25kg on his bench press in 6months. One of our 63kg women was out with an injury for 9months and hammered upper body conditioning hitting 51 on the push up test. So tests like this are removed as they are not representative of what actively competing athlete’s physical characteristics look like when competing. • Be careful how to phrase “benchmarks”.

Since working in judo I have continually changed the top level 10 benchmark on all tests, mainly because of the great work development coaches are doing with smarter and harder training down the pathway. These are not “standards” but rather targets to be obliterated, I hope this article will go out of date and need updated very quickly! • The earliest data is from October 2008 and most recent is September 2016, included are Junior & Senior European, World, Olympic, and Senior Paralympic medalists, as well as some international elite athletes so it’s pretty accurate. With that being said the most successful senior athletes are rarely the 10, but almost always in the 8 and above zone for all benchmarks.

• If I have made a typo please get in touch so I can correct SENIOR WOMEN SENIOR MEN There you have it, accurate data from actual Elite performers. If you’re stronger or fitter that’s great, find a way to express it on the tatami. If you’re not quite up to scratch, keep training hard, keep training smart and remember things take time. Previously, many athletes had higher strength scores, however none of these ever medaled at the elite level (Europeans, Worlds, Olympics or Paralympics) so I have calibrated the data from actual high performers. Remember, recreational athletes who train judo 2-4 times per week and strength/fitness train 3-4 days per week may have higher scores, however when looking at full-time athletes who typically have 7-12 judo session per week this data is very accurate.

Typically, just for interest more than anything, GB athletes are very strong in the weight room compared to other nations. Thanks to social media (such as instagram) most athletes put PB’s online, and also having seen them train and speak to them they are usually very impressed with the GB physicality. This, in my opinion, is most likely due to better lifting technique compared to others nations as many of our best athletes have qualified S&C coaches whereas often foreign athletes are coached by their judo coach for all areas of performance. A final note for coaches, parents and athletes.

If I want to get a big squat I will likely squat several days per week, if I want a big bench press I will likely do the same. Practicing these movements everyday will very quickly increase coordination, rhythm and timing of these lifts and the number of plates on the bar will increase quickly. HOWEVER, the rate of skill increase will likely be greater than my rate of strength increase if I choose this strategy i.e.

I will be squatting and benching big numbers but my strength will be extremely specific to these two lifts. Instead the strategy I choose for Judo athletes, who need to be strong in almost all positions, would be to select a range of different exercises of the same theme. For example if we want stronger legs we will use front squats, single leg squat, single leg press and so on; if we want stronger pushing strength we will use overhead presses, dips, weighted push ups and sometimes bench press and its variations.

The big positive of this methods is that the athletes get stronger in many more positions and it is likely more transferrable to this sport; the negative side of this is that if you have a big ego you’ll likely never have the biggest squat or bench press in the weight roombut you can push 1.5x bodyweight twenty different ways, in all three planes, rather than in just one exercise, in one plane. So please, with your developing athletes be a generalist, yes master the exercises but don’t hammer the same ones everyday as it will cheat the tests. For more training info please read and Cheers Allan. A note to parents & coaches Whisky and Long Term Physicality Development have much more in common than you might be led to believe. With the 2016 Summer Olympics almost over there is a lot of buzz around what have British Sports being doing between London 2012 and Rio 2016 to build such an impressive medal tally, exceeding the London medal count and finish second on the medal table ahead of Sporting superpower China. There will undoubtedly be young athletes who will be aspiring to be the next Jade Jones, Alasdair Brownlee or Sally Conway; however their coaches and parents must not fall into the trap of copying how these senior elite athletes are physically training now, but rather what process they have followed to get them to where they are. The purpose of this article is to give coaches and parents of younger athletes some basic idea’s and concepts around progressive training and to reassure them that this process takes time and time cannot be cheated!

For coaches and parents who haven’t read the Great British Medallist study here is the link. It is worth it’s weight in gold so it’s a must read and it will give you some great insight into commonalities which shape the characteristics of elite medalling athletes Summary in case you’re short on time • There are five stages to making whisky and five stages towards long term physicality development • Stages 1-4 of both whisky making and long term physicality development require a systematic and measured approach, adding the correct ingredients, in the correct amounts, at the correct time during the process. • Stage five is Maturation of the whisky and Competing to Win. This process cannot be rushed nor cheated, but rather we must trust out initial, time tested process and let the whisky and athlete mature. • Too much screwing around while the whisky as in the cask, or while the athlete training to win will likely lead to a bitter taste in everyone’s mouth!

Now back to whisky making, and particularly how it relates to the development of long term physicality. To make a beautiful Single Malt Scotch Whisky, such as Glenmorangie, there are essentially five phases which must be transitioned through and these are very similar to our Long Term Physicality Development framework. Below is a table relating the five phases of the whisky making process to our five phases of our long term physicality development “process”. Whisky making Phase LTAD Phase Malting Fundamentals Mashing Learning to Train Fermentation Training to Train Distillation Train to Compete Maturation Compete to Win Phase 1 – Malting & Fundamentals To begin making whisky barely must be gathered, and then soaked it in warm (not boiling!) water so that the starch can become sugar – this process is called malting.

Of course, the better quality of the starting barley the better quality the final whisky so it is essential to select the correct crop with the desired characteristics to make a quality whisky. After a few days malting, the barley is then transferred to a kiln where it is heated, dried out and any rough bits are weeded out at this point. To being training a future champions we first of all need a volume – that is volume of different sports to sample and volume of quality children. By quality I mean children who have good PCDE’s (psychological characteristics of developing excellence ) as without these improving physicality is going to end up fruitless. Of course, the more suited the child is to the sport the better the chance of eventually ending up with a senior athlete with the desired characteristics for that sport – it’s difficult to be a world class men’s rower at only 5’2 with t-rex arms. Really, the fundamentals stage is more about shaping the mindset of the child.

Just like a grain of barley, most of the children who come at the beginning have some rough edges and some “husk” which we must try to sieve out, but make no mistake we’re not making a beautiful whisky if we have poor grain from to begin with and it’s unlikely we’re making race horses if we’re only given ill-tempered donkeys in the beginning. Phase 2 – Mashing & Learning to Train The second stage of whisky making is called mashing and this is where the ground down malt (barley) is added to warm water and then “mashed” around for several hours so that the sugar in the barley is released, leaving a mixture called “wort”. This is repeated 2-3 times, each time increasing the water temperature, so that the best quality sugar released from the barley. Similarly, with young children we must give them the opportunity to begin to develop their physical potential “mashing” them to different sports, different environments and experiences early in their development. For example, to develop physical skills young children being exposed to team sports can develop pattern recognition abilities; being exposed to gymnastics or parkour may develop individual movement skills across a wide movement vocabulary; participating in in things like dancing will develop rhythm, timing and accuracy with a partner; learning to play an instrument can develop high level of dexterity and attention to detail; and sports like rock climbing or diving will develop a lot of courage as there is a “danger” perception associated with tasks involving heights (although very safe). Phase 3 – Fermentation & Training to Train Fermentation involves cooling the liquid and passing it into large tanks called washbacks. The whisky distillers then add yeast which turns the sugar into alcohol.

The distiller will carefully select the type of yeast to add to the mixture as this will impact the taste of the finished product. The fermentation process usually takes take two days, however some distilleries may leave it longer depending on the exact trademarks their whisky requires. The liquid at this stage is called ‘wash’ and is low in alcohol strength like beer or ale. They could brew the liquid at this point to make beer, but they are after excellence, so the liquid is now distilled for to be more refined, purer and much higher quality.

All grains of barley have the potential to become fine whiskies, just all children have the potential to become champions given the right ingredients are added at the correct time in their development – now is that time to add the general ingredients. Ingredients, such as structured and progressive aerobic endurance training, strength training, speed training added during these puberty years are going to catapult the basic physicality of these young athletes and you will undoubtedly see a very quick increase in their performance. It is essential that these basic general physical characteristics are developed in a non-specific way as it is already likely their volume of Judo or sport-specific training is increasing during these years, so instead develop endurance using swimming, running, cycling; and develop strength using weightlifting, rock climbing and gymnastics. Remember, some athletes ferment quicker than others, but trust this process and be progressive in adding new physical training elements and don’t be tempted to add a whole load of new things at once. We might have the beginning of a great rugby player, footballer, fencer, or Judoka but bottling them up now for the big leagues based on some quick physical improvements will mean they’ll likely end up a common beer.

Phase 4 – Distillation & Training to Compete Next the liquid wash is heated in the tall stills where it vaporises and condenses at the top. This is repeated a couple of times and the condensed vapours are collected as are used to make the whisky. Interestingly, the first batch of condensed vapours are the strongest seldom make the final cask and neither do the stragglers of condensed vapours which are too weak – these are recycled into the system to help make the next cask of whisky. Only the finest, middle vapours, known as the “heart make the cut to be matured in the cask. Every great athlete needs a little pressure to rise to the top, now is the time to add a little heat and watch how the highest performers separate from the others! How often do are coaches excited about the strongest, earliest batch of performers coming through that their poor behaviours are ignored and they are let into the final cask only to ruin the culture and taste of the entire barrel? How often do are weak behaviours accepted?

Athletes with weak behaviours who will likely never consistently perform and perhaps dilute the strong, desired taste of the batch, making it a nice dram but never one to remember. Critically, we must be inclusive and put nothing to waste so these athletes to improve the potential of the next batch coming through.

Remember performance is multi-faceted and complex – athletes that truly achieve great things and make the final cask are rarely the very strongest, rarely the first vapours who rise first out of the stills but are for certain the purest with the correct blend of skill, physicality and mentality. Phase 5 – Maturation & Training to Win The final stage of the whisky making process is taking the condensed, collected alcohol spirit and sealing it inside a barrel. The type of barrel, typically sherry or bourbon cask, is going to shape the trademarks of the whisky, such as the taste and colour. The whisky is then stored in the barrel, and the time it is left to mature for is the age of the whisky you see on the bottle, whether that’s 10years old, 15years old and so on. Interestingly, the environment the whisky is stored and left to mature in will influence the final product which is just one of the reasons whisky have different characteristics making them truly unique. Maturation is the stage where, as coaches and parents, we need the highest levels of self-awareness and restraint.

Stages 1-4 require a huge amount of time and effort invested to ensure that each stage has been optimised to yield an alcohol with the highest potential to mature into a fine whisky. However, what typically happens in coaching is that our alcohol doesn’t taste like a 10year old whisky after only 1year in the cask, so we get frustrated and we tweak it and hope this fixes the taste.

We see our 17year old girl not as strong as our 27year olds women so we try to push for bigger loads in the weight room before the athlete has earned the right to lift those load. Look at it like this, if we only added the silver 1.25kg discs to each side of the barbell ONCE A MONTH, then over a 10month training period that would be 25kg improvement and in 3years 75kg improvement. But, instead some choose blast up the intensity, training maximally every session because somehow training with the same bar load for 3-4weeks before increasing won’t work – utter nonsense! Then another year down the line we again taste the 2year old alcohol expecting it miraculously be tasting like a fine 10year old, and unsurprisingly it doesn’t taste right so again some more tweaking happens. Despite having seen the successful 27year old athlete’s journey, knowing what landmarks they hit in their development journey, we ignore all this and frequently abandon key principles and they fact that things sometimes just take time.

This process of tweaking and screwing around with trial and lots of errors is repeated time and time again, and after several years the mixture that was on the correct, evidence proven path to become a lovely whisky is instead a concoction with no desirable characteristicsit kind of tastes like whisky but isn’t! This is similar to what we see all the time with athletes – as soon as they finish being juniors and enter the senior ranks they have some of the skills and characteristics of the senior elite players, particularly from a strength & power perspective. At the end of athlete’s junior careers, if we have done our jobs correctly they should be as strong, as powerful and as “fit” as most elite seniors, but of course they haven’t had the 5-10years exposure to high level competition with these physical characteristics so of course their physicality in judo-specific situations wont emerge for some time.

Yes there are unique individuals who may have been exposed to unique cask, in a unique environment at a unique time, but that is exactly why we use these athletes as examplebecause they stand out as exceptions! In a sport like weightlifting, or strongman, it’s very rare we see young athletes excelling consistently at the elite level.

Yes they may be super strong, just as strong as the elite in basic exercises which take relatively less time to develop the skill & coordination for; but it takes time, lots of time, for this “transfer” to allow them to demonstrate their strength in the complex Olympic lifts and Strongman events. As judo coaches and parents we can recognise this in other sports, but somehow feel judo is “different”! As coaches we try to cheat time, somehow expecting the impossible and wonder why our newly made alcohol doesn’t taste or perform like a mature whisky or athlete.

Rather than trusting the initial stages of the process that have been completed to perfection and letting the athlete mature they are continually muddled with and altered which will change the time proven destination. Now, I am not saying that the process cannot be monitored, cannot be improved, made more efficient, or even phases of the process acceleratedbut some things take time and we need to trust in the process. Trust that by exposing the mixture to the correct environments early in its development and allowing it to mature we will arrive at something beautiful, it’s been happening for years; remember patience is a virtue. When things don’t happen right away, just remember It takes 6months to build a Rolls-Royce and only 13hours to build a Toyota.

Trust the process. In the last article I went through how to design a resistance program for Judo and MMA. To follow this up I’ve created a diagnostic tool which hopefully helps you as a coach, parent or athlete complete a visual assessment which will help inform your training program design and track progress in judo-specific tasks.

Summary in case you are short on time: • We must agree what being “strong” actually looks like so that we can design a program specific to our weakness and strength; and importantly measure (visually) if we are getting stronger at our actual judo-specific tasks. • We have broken down dominating kumi-kata, throwing for ippon & winning in newaza and identified what might be limiting improvements in these from a strength perspective. • We have given some recommendations over what “general strength” exercises might transfer in well to help remove strength as a rate limiter for improving the judo-specific task. Recently I was having a discussion with a senior athlete who is planning moving up weight category and they suggested they needed to get “stronger”; so to accurately identify what actually needs to get stronger we must first create clarity over what being judo-specific strong actually looks like. I am not a fan of a reductionist approach to complex sports such as judo, however as this article is primarily written for coaches, parents and athlete (as opposed to S&C coaches & sport scientist) I have decided to simplify the problem solving process. With this being said the problems its important to recognise that solutions to problems in complex sports, such as judo, are seldom solved with a single approach and likely getting stronger is only one part of the huge puzzle. “Strength is the ability to produce Force on an external object.

The magnitude of force production can range from zero to maximum. Force exerted on an external object having a mass results in that object’s acceleration (Force = Mass x Acceleration) an a velocity of movement.” Principles and Practice of Resistance Training.

Isometric Strength is the maximum force that can be applied under static conditions Dynamic Strength is the maximum force that can be applied under moving conditions. Strength Endurance is the ability to repeatedly produce force, therefore as this is an endurance capacity it is not discussed in this article. Summary incase you’re short on time in this article we cover • Gaining clarity and defining what being strong, powerful and what moving well looks like in the sport specific tasks is essential – put some clear definitions in place. • The Super 10 Strength movements make up all exercises in developmental athlete’s training programme. • For each of the Super 10 movements there is a stability exercise, strength exercise and speed exercise. • To minimize noise stick to either a stability session, strength session or speed session, mixing these up can dilute the training effect.

• Keep the weight room heavy, fast and precise. • Movement variation is a key tool to increase combat athlete strength, we’d rather have an athlete press 100kg 20 different ways than press 110kg only 1 way. • Speed training must have some sort of measure of intent, whether it’s jump height or ball toss distance. • Frontal & transverse planes are predominantly used for the athletes who need more stability; sagittal plane exercises from a large part of the strength exercises; and we do explosive work in every direction.

Exercise Selection for Strength & Power Training is a popular topic for martial artists, such as Judo athletes and Mixed Martial Arts fighters, so this article will cover some of my thoughts on how I design content for these sports. I’ve written the information specifically for Junior and intermediate fighters and in a language that coaches and athletes can understand, so hopefully the sport science police won’t be too harsh on me for not including too much jargon and going into every specific muscular action of each exercise! Also it goes beyond the scope of this article to go into loading percentages, repetition and volume schemes, loading progressions and periodisation schemes – grab any Mike Stone or Greg Haff Textbook and that’ll do a much better job than I can. Before we begin looking at how to improve our fighters physically it is really important we gain clarity around what being physically Strong and Powerful looks like in the actual sporting movements, what sporting tasks we need to be strong and powerful for, and create some objective criteria to assess our athlete against in the specific task of their sport. When observing athletes in combat sports I break Strength & Power into 2 primary categories of 1.

Movement Precision and 2. Strength & Length; then within both these categories there are several subcategories.

Movement Precision Movement Precision is made up of a combination of Balance, Coordination and Mechanics. Movement take the raw strength and speed that the muscle is capable of and synchronising this to the sport specific tasks. One of my favourite Frans Bosch quotes, which I’ve paraphrased from memory is “At some point it is not important which instrument in the orchestra is playing the loudest, but rather how are all the instruments synchronised to produce a beautiful sound” and this to me is where movement training fits it. In fighters, the way in which they apply force their opponents is more important that the total force which is being produced, and it is our job of making the making the muscles strong and making the sports movements precise.

As Connor McGregor would say: Below I’ve given three examples of observables we would see which would allow us to identify if an athlete has good movement precision, there are obviously lots however this will give a good insight into the process. Balance: A fighter with good balance will be able to keep their hips over their base of support while their arms and legs are striking, kicking and grappling their opponent.

Coordination: A coordinated Judoka will display consistently fluid/smooth rhythm, speed & tempo during gripping movement, during throwing and during transitions into groundwork. Mechanics: A Judoka with good mechanics will demonstrate every repetition of a throw looks consistently the same as the previous repetition, even when using different variations of the throw, speeds of throw, from different start positions, different sequences and opponents. Strength & Length When we discuss length we are specifically taking about mobility, which is the range of movement around a joint and a muscle; combined with having strength produced quickly enough for the desired task outcome; and with control and precision of movement throughout this range. The first element of Strength & Length is Mobility which can be seen by the athlete having required range of movement, and control within that range, to execute the skill with the desired mechanics. For example, if a MMA fighter can front kick to their opponent’s head without having to compromise their own stance balance, trunk or head position they have adequate hip and lower leg range for the task.

In Judo, it’s important to have around +70degrees of shoulder internal rotation for throws such as Uchimata so that we can maintain trunk contact with our opponent and not have to compromise lack of shoulder range by dropping our chest – this could be one observable. If we want to look at mobility of the shoulder for a throw such as Uchimata we may measure GIRD or simply ensure athletes have shoulder rotation to allow them to touch their hands behind their back with one arm over and one arm under, on both left and right arms – this would may be a second observable. The second element of Strength & Length is Strength. When we discuss strength for combat athletes, firstly are taking about having enough overall “strength” to endure demands of being repeatedly kicked, punches, thrown, pushed, pulled, twisted and so on without sustaining soft tissue injuries such as torn muscles and tendons; we could call this robustness or physical resilience. Next we will look at what Strength in specific tasks look like so we can distinguish strong athletes from those who need to be stronger.

For example, an athlete who is strong can keep their hands on the opponents JudoGi with their desired grip during gripping exchanges, when throwing and in groundwork. Another observable of upper body and hand strength would be that the arm and hand movements are fluid enough, and forceful enough so that they can open and close the distance with their partner on their terms. This example of opening and closing space is a useful one for gaining clarity around the common problem where an athlete might have very impressive pushing & pulling strength in the gym, for example 1.5x bodyweight Bench Press and 1.5x Chin Up yet they cannot open and close the space against an opponent of much lesser gym strength. Our athlete is “generally strong” meaning their pushing and pull muscles can absorb and produce a lot of force. Make no mistake this athlete is “strong” in a general sense which gives them the potential to be strong in any pushing and pulling tasks in any sport, but they are not displaying in in their grappling yet so this needs to be a priority to “transfer” this strength from the weight room to the mat!

To use my racing driver analogy again, if you upgrade all the components of your car so that its speed increases from 100mph to 150mph, but you fail to upgrade the skill of the driver to use this in cornering, breaking and accelerating the car will not go any faster! Essentially strength is task specific.

The third component of Strength & Length is Explosive Strength. This could be demonstrated by blasting through opponent’s resistance during throws and continue their momentum through their opponent to the ground.

Another example of explosive strength would be that a Judo athlete can kill the momentum of their opponent’s attacks, such as reversing or changing their opponent’s movement direction, so the attack is nullified. At this point it is also useful to point out the negative version of the observable i.e. What we see if they do not have explosive strength, as this might help us gain further clarity on exactly what we must wee; in this case we would see an athlete accelerating in a slow speed and crumpling when meeting their opponent’s resistance as if hitting a solid wall. The final component of Strength & Length would be Muscular Endurance, the ability to continue to produce forceful movements over the duration of a contest.

An example of good muscular endurance in MMA would be that a fighter who can maintain control of their opponent’s limbs in groundwork, whether attacking or defending. For example, squeezing onto their opponent’s leg to prevent a mount being mounted or when attacking in the mount position delivering a high frequency of punches to damage and submit opponent. Again, a negative example of an athlete who does not have good muscular endurance could be that they lose posture after several minutes of the contest, or perhaps the athlete begins to move their arms and legs differently than earlier in the contest, for example their techniques deviate from the desired technical model, and they are overall moving much slower and “heavier”. Hopefully this gives some sort of insight into how I use observables from the sport, alongside my, to build a picture of what a strong & powerful athlete should look like and identify what needs developing physically. Exercise Selection Now to get into the specifics of the programs that are prescribed. From my perspective there are two primary routes to prescribing S&C content.

The first way is to view the athlete in their sport and then carry out assessments to inform training content to bring up what physical qualities they need but do not have. For example, in weightlifting having an athlete only clean & jerk and snatch and then building assistance exercises around them based on the technical errors/weaknesses that eventually emerge. The big benefit of this is that there is no wasted content, or extra training “fluff” and everything prescribed in the program has a distinct purpose and change is easily measureable.

The second method which I believe is more effective, particular if you get access to developmental athletes, is to prescribe all fundamental movements to ensure there are no weakness in the athlete’s movement armory and most importantly to allow “super strength” to emerge through the training process. I fully concede that to begin with there may be some additional content which might not be of much use to the athlete, particularly if they are naturally good at some movements so on first look there is some “fluff”. However, I believe it is better to put the checks in place early in their career to ensure no movements are untrained and at the very least it aids to raising their work capacity and during a time in their career when sport-specific volume is increasing, repetition of sport-specific movements is increasing giving them different movement variations to prevent overuse, in my experience is very effective. Below are the Super 10 Movements I select from to prescribe content to the athlete. • Throwing and Catching • Carrying & Crawling (locomotive) • Jumping & Landing • Squatting • Lunging & 1-Leg Squatting • Hip Hinging • Upper body Pushing • Upper body Pulling • Bracing • Rotating Based on an initial movement screen, and importantly observing them in their sport and chatting to the coach, I group athletes into three categories. The categories are those that are wobbly & weak; those that are stable and need strength; and finally those that are strong but need to be speedy. Within each of the Super 10 Movement categories we have a stability versions of the movement, strength versions of the movement and speed/explosive versions of the movements.

We also have versions of each of the movements in the sagittal, frontal and transverse planes. As stated in athletes perform these fundamental movements in all warm ups, in all plane and we manipulate key variables such as the speed, surface, type of muscle contraction to help make these movement patterns very consistent in any situation. Throwing & Catching: Judo is a sport all about throwing, so it makes sense to get better at accelerating and throwing different objects, at different speeds, in different directions. I typically use both vertical medicine ball throws for height and horizontal ball throws for distance, we measure distances or try to hit the roof with a given weight to drive intent. During Judo throws to the front, such as Uchimata, it’s essential to produce vertical force quickly to get your partner’s hips and feet up off the ground so that you are in control of their bodyweight. We have 2,3,5,6,7,8,9 & 15kg Medicine balls which we throw and try to hit the roof with, this helps give the athlete feedback to make sure they are synching up their vertical movement.

Horizontal throws are used to help throws to the rear, such as Ouchi Gari, and double-leg take downs to aid projecting the hips forwards at high speed. For catching, usually the coaches play some sort of handball/rugby game after the warm up so this is taken care of there or in their gripping sessions catching sleeves. Carrying & Crawling: For athletes who are wobbly I use overhead walks, such as using the water ball walking over low hurdles, forwards and backwards lunges and sideways movements. For stronger, more solid athletes I’ll use the atlas stones or the heavy swiss ball filled with water, they carry them in front to help posture and also on one shoulder to further increase the frontal load when walking. For crawling I use all the common exercises like bear crawls, crab walks and will put a tennis ball peanut on the lower back to help improve stability in the wobbly athletes and a weight disc or partner surfing on their back for the strong athletes.

Jumping & Landing: Most of the time I will use Slow Stretch Shortening (SSC) Jumps as fast ground contact time is not a limiting factor in judo, this is exaggerated even more by the fact the Judo mats are somewhat soft so have quite a bit of give in them. They do simple squat jumps, lateral jumps, jumps with twists for the wobbly athletes and progress to single leg landings then finally single leg take off’s – focus is always on landing mechanics and being quiet. Stronger athletes will use loaded jump squats, often with 30-50% of their maximum back squat and more often than not from a pause or off pins to try to make it as ballistic and concentric as possible.

We’ll often use a cheap jump mat to drive intent on these jumps. Similarly, the stronger athletes use broad jumps with a band around the hips and broomstick on the shoulders to exaggerate hip projection and force being produced at the hips as the arms won’t be assisting on the Judo mat – these get measured.

They’ll do a small amount of fast SSC bouncing on different surfaces to increase tendon stiffness and force transmission from muscle to skeleton, sometimes on the harder gym floor and sometimes on the crash mat, or even on the mat with socks. Since there isn’t a much, if any, fast SSC in judo something as simple as skipping gives an overload so 1-2 times per week we add this into warm ups and practice double unders and single leg skipping.

Squats: For the complete beginners I use Goblet Squat to a ball to get correct mechanics and then quickly progress to Overhead Squats. I prefer to use a close grip Overhead Squat as this helps improve thoracic extension strength and Latissimus Dorsi length which are important for correct shoulder mechanics on throws such as morote seoi nage.

Once athletes get to bodyweight or appear to have lost their wobbles I switch them to front squats to again develop postural strength and then eventually back squats. They’ll use movement variation as a method of overload so they will use chains for a few week, bands, and even half squats and squats off pins if they really need to increase their strength potential.

This works well with women as sometimes they need to feel confident with 2.2x bodyweight on their back for a set of 5 half squats before they have the belief to full squat 1.75x bodyweight for a single. For athletes who are strong, stable and need more explosiveness they use high band tension with low bar weight. The bands we have mean that they are unloaded at the bottom so it is only bar weight, and then we put lots of band tension at the top so that the bands pull them down quicker than normal straight bar load they need to accelerate up as hard as possible or they won’t get up. I’ve found this helps massively with intent because if its 50kg at the bottom and 120kg at the top they’ve got to drive as hard as possiblethis makes accelerating through an opponent just a habit. Lunges and 1-Leg work: For beginners they start with pistol squats in bare feet using bands around their hips to help lift them up. Being able to do an unassisted pistol squats means they have to be able to dorsiflex their ankle (get the knee in front of the toes) and this is critical for creating a forwards leaning shin angle during throwing.

Athletes need their shins pointing in the direction they’re going to explode and for techniques to the rear the sharper the shin angle the more speed and force and greater chance of throwing. While working on pistol squats the wobbly athletes will also be doing split squats with dumbells and then progress this to step back lunges holding dumbells, and finally overhead step back lunges. The stronger athletes use Bulgarian split squats and look to elevate the rear leg to increase load on the support/front leg, vary these with barbell on front or back to increase load even further. For the strong and stable athletes they’ll use 1-leg box jumps to limit single leg landing forces, then progress to split squat jumps from the floor. They do these split squat jumps for height but also side to side and rotating to be explosive in all three planes.

I have used barbell split squats with bands to increase speed but mostly I try to keep the fast stuff really fast and the heavy stuff really heavy when it comes to single leg work. Hip Hinge: For beginners I use kettlebell romanian deadlift with a vertical shin and slight knee bend which stays constant. Using the kettlebell allows the athlete to push the kettlebell between their legs and displace the hips backwards which creates the hinging movement, and I’ll usually get them sanding with their heels on a line and tell them to put the kettlebell down behind the line.

Once the have got this movement progress to clean grip romanian deadlift and then normal clean deadlift from the floor – always with a straight back. This nonsense around “well they get put in bad positions in the ring so need to train in bad positions in the gym” is poor critical thinking. Yes when the wind blows the support beams of a skyscraper flex and bend, but that doesn’t mean you should build the tower with bend beams!!! The straighter the beams are prior to loading the more tolerance they will have when subject to torque forces and it is the same with the spine. We train with a rigid, neutral spine to overload the hip extensor muscles which help throwing to the rear; bending the spine reduces this force and increases shear forces in the back. Yes, if all you do is go to the gym crack on lifting with that turtle back, for those who do judo 7-10 sessions per week or about 20hours specific combat training get enough shear through their discs in “awkward and bad” positions during sparring, so lets practice moving well in the weight room like our explosive, injury free buddies in weightlifting!

For the strong stable athlete’s they use hang cleans or kettlebell swings with a band tied around the handle while standing on it. This makes the load increase throughout the swing which reduces the momentum generated at the start of the swing carrying the kettlebell upwards. This means that the is more force required as the hips approach extension which is different to the clean as typically the bar reaches peak velocity just prior to full extensionat least in most non-elite Olympic liftings. I love this exercise as it forces full extension and projection of the hips and attaching more bands with the same load of kettlebell will promote a high rate of force development with a simple, not complex exercise so that athlete can extend the hips with maximum intent and force. On saying this we still Hang Clean as the absolute load is higher and so is the rate of force development at heavier loads is higher.

Just a note, MMA athletes need to watch cleans as there is already a lot of compression on the wrists during punching and wrist impingement is common in the catch/front rack position. Clean pulls are great but we since we can’t measure bar speed or RoFD on a force plate I choose other exercises which seem better for developing intent. Judo players who do morote seoi nage need to watch their elbow valgus in the catch position, big volumes of morote seoi on the mat would probably mean I’d take out cleans, similarly those with poor shoulder internal and external rotation we will pick something else until we improve this, if we can improve it! Pushing: Push Ups, they start with these as coaches love throwing them into sessions or as punishments so juniors better get good at them early because junior athletes can’t tell them time, or maybe choose not tooeither way they’ll be doing lots! They do normal push ups, slider or typewriter push ups for frontal stability and also split stance with one arm higher than the other for some rotational stability. Once an athlete can do 10 push ups they progress to Overhead barbell press for pushing strength. I’m not the biggest fan of bench press for MMA and Judo athletes, the postural benefits and scapular upwards rotation from an overhead press, or the stability and extension range from ring dips outweigh lying on your back, shoulders pinned to the bench trying to shorten the range to lift as much as possible – Olympian and Paralympians can overhead press and ring dip with weight, boys who go to get a Friday pump on can lie on their backs bench press!

On saying this some of the boys still like to do it and I’m fine with this but most seniors won’t. For explosive pushing they do medicine ball shot putts for distance, medicine ball chest pass for distance or clap push ups, anything ballistic and which allows acceleration and minimizes acceleration. The really heavy guys may use close grip speed bench press with large band tension at the top with minimal at the bottom – the close grip increases the range they have to produce force over and makes the force vector more similar to pushing against an opponent. Pulling: Inverted Rows on the TRX are mission number one to emphasize keeping the shoulder blades down, tucked into the athlete’s back pockets. Then progress to bent over barbell row which is great for horizontal pulling, they always start with the barbell below the knee caps around mid-shin to exaggerate pulling at right angles to the trunk. They will also do weighted chin ups, palms facing the athlete as this is great for strengthening the external shoulder rotators and helps increase Latissimus Dorsi length through the eccentric action.

They also do Ring chin ups and externally rotate as pulling up and then internally rotate when lowering eccentrically. For explosive pulling do ballistic bent over row starting from the floor so it is concentric only, and also starting from a dead hang on each repetition to develop explosive strength from pre-tension. They also do clap pull ups, but our favorite is arms only rope climbs for speed with long arm pulls not short ones. Bracing: I use the term “nipple to knees” (only with the over 18’s) as some sort of indicator as to where the “trunk” is and that during trunk bracing this region should be static – like and iron rod!

For sagittal bracing firstly they start off with the basic front plank and work up to 3minutes with bodyweight, and do the same for the frontal plane bracing using the side plank. For anti-rotational bracing they start with a kneeling paloff press using a light band or the keiser machine usually for 10repetitions each side, 3 sets. Kneeling shortens the torque arm so the rotation forces are lower than when standing. Once an athlete can complete the 3minute planks and are able to stay solid on the paloff press, and as long as they can do 10push ups, progress to barbell rollouts. Begin just holding the push up position with hands on the bar and then focus on moving the bar 1inch out and then 1inch back.

Do these in full push up position and not on the knees as this encourages hinging at the hip, whereas we want a straight line from the tip of the toes to the tip of their nose! For frontal bracing strength we make things slightly more reactive by lying side on in the glute ham developer and doing disc pulses out in a straight line to rapidly load the lateral trunk. For anti-rotational strength I do not program too much as there is a lot of this going on in judo, particularly on the ground when trying to turn over and not be turned over.

Rotation: Rotation is obviously critical in a combat sports whether striking, kicking or throwing. In all warm ups I programme hip and shoulder dissociation work, which is basically being able to twist in the spine so separate the shoulders and hips. We do lots of thoracic around the worlds, yoga reaches to the sky, scorpions and bent knee fallouts to the side. In the weight room I take the wobbly athletes and put them in a kneeling split stance as this blocks the hips and allows them to feel what it is like to separate hips and shoulder rotation. I have them attach a band to the rack and rotate away to lengthen the band, making sure the leg which is closest to the rack in the one with the knee down, so that they are rotating over the far away knee which blocks the hips from rotating.

Often I will manually help the athlete get a few more degrees rotation and then they will have to hold the new position and slowly rotate back to the start, this is eccentric strengthen and quickly gives them strength in this new range. Once they are able to stay strong and have good rotational range I progress to landmines for rotational strength as well as “hammer” plate rotations with straight arms as if throwing an Olympic hammer, I stole this off Martin Bingisser the hammer thrower. Finally, for rotational speed they do side medicine ball tosses into the ball, however now they use slam balls since the balls kept splitting.

Occasionally they’ll play medicine ball tennis in the dojo in teams of 3-4 and I constrain the athletes to only using forwards facing side tosses, or sideward facing side tosses to change the range they have to accelerate the ball. I also change the load of the ball every few points. Although not strictly trunk rotation they do medicine, or slam ball slams. We get the athletes to stand as tall as they can, up on their tip toes so they are right at their end of range and then they try to smash the ball through the floor as if throwing a big stone through ice below them.

More of often than not we pair glute ham upwards facing disc pulses for trunk isometric rate of force development with slam ball slams for trunk dynamic rate of force development and this gets positive feedback from the athletes. Below are some examples of the programmes which are being completed by our development athletes. To finish off with I’ve put some bulletpoints below with some of my other thought process behind programme design, most are my opinion and have been formed by watching combat athletes from different disciplines and guide my current way of thinking • In our initial screening we movement screen the athletes on all the fundamental movements and in all planes and this helps inform whether they do the stability, strength or speed version of a movement. More often than not we have them almost always start exclusively on the stability movements and we’ll use carrots to get them to buy into the process so they can progress onto the strength variations. • More often than not strength versions of exercises are in the sagittal plane as I feel it is too difficult to get a heavy enough load to develop maximum force using frontal or transverse dominant exercises. On saying this, I frequently avoid sagittal movements in circuits and opt for loaded frontal and transverse variations over a range of loads and velocities to build movement precision in these planes when fatigued. • Variation of Movements: I would prefer that the combat athletes I support can squat 150kg twenty different ways than 160kg only one way.

I believe that being strong in a wide variety of a particular movement outweighs being slightly stronger in one specific version of a movement. It is difficult with weight cutting and +15 competitions per year, alongside +100days of sparring training camps to get most male fighters much more than 2.5x Bodyweight for deadlift, 2x Bodyweight for squat and 1.6x Bodyweight for Chin Ups. Rather than hammering for years and years to get to a 2.6x Deadlift or 1.7x Chin Up I would rather make some calculated variation in a lift, for example altering the the force curve of a lift using chains to make the athlete strong in a slightly different variation of that movement.

Just one more point on variation, most S&C coaches now are touting the benefits of sampling different sports at a young age to give the athlete many “motor patterns” yet stick exclusively to power cleans, back squats, deadlifts and bench press as the primary strength exercise and vary only the loads to get adaptation – sure bench press strength goes up but does transferrable pressing strength increase to the same extent? I doubt it but maybe I am wrong. • I only programme one version of a movement per session, for example one push and one pull; gone are the days of bench press, overhead press and push ups being in the same session. • I believe that it is chronic exposure to heavy loading, and chronic exposure to explosive movements over a period of months and years which eventually allows transfer to be realised – yes we do have “special developmental exercises” however these too need to be performed over time to realise the full benefit.

A 17year old who is exposed to simple, heavy loading and explosive movements for the next 10years, will mean they have 10years of practicing their sport-specific skills with continually improving physical capacities. If you take a weak 28year old and in 6months get their deadlift to improve by 80kg the chances are they will still be weak as a child on the mat or in the ring as they have not had years of practicing their craft with those physical skills. Of course “special exercises” will accelerate transfer and realising this in the sport skill but in my experience it doesn’t seem to every work that way as the old skill patterns, with the old force and velocity profiles seem too cemented to change. • We don’t have the budget at the moment to buy any force-velocity measuring kit, however we make really good use of the measuring tape. All broad jumps are done against the measuring tape, usually in a group of athletes so they are competitive. We have a dodgy jump mat which we use for vertical jumps, we don’t use this for any data collection but purely having the athlete try to beat their previous effort drives their intent. • I find that challenging athlete intent to be quick and explosive is probably more important that then exact exercise you decide, and competitions in training are essential to getting maximum intent in this work.

Whether it’s a medicine ball chest throw for distance or medicine ball shot putt for distance, I’m most interested in what the athlete is trying to win at and what exercise they are looking like they are going maximum on. For this reason I favor simplicity of explosive movements over complex ones. • For the most part I keep the variation of the movement the same for all the athletes in the strength group, all the athletes in the speed group and all the athletes in the stability group. It makes it much easier to coach and enhance the athlete’s learning by watching others performing the same movement as them, and I can ask them questions to accelerate this skill learning process. As I say multiple times each day “For us to be World Class we need to be doing the basics better than everyone else!” • We try to keep the weight room for lifting heavy and lifting fast as combat sports work a lot in the mid-range of force and mid-range of speed curves so to drive an adaptation in the body we try to give a clear signal with very little noise i.e. Throw this light ball as fast and as far as possible!

A lot of the stability based work is just hidden in warm ups, everyone does these warm ups as I do believe practicing the fundamentals frequently benefits even the most advanced athlete. I hope the above gives some insight into how we select exercises for our developmental athletes and gives some ideas to take back to your own environment Cheers Allan. In this article I’m going to outline the progression of warm ups prior to sport-specific sessions that I’ve used since beginning work with Performance Judo athletes in 2009.

Also, some of my previous posts have been rather lengthy so this one is deliberately short, with more examples of what I’ve done/are currently doing. I’ve used the original templates for the warm ups – it is quite funny how little the template has changes over 7years! It’s also worth noting that these were the framework for the sessions although its likely I deviated a little bit from them as I enjoy experimenting in the warm ups with different things I’d seen from other coaches and online. Summary in case you’re short on time: • The R.A.M.P protocol involves Raising the heart rate and body temperature, Activating key muscles and movements, Mobilising key joints and muscles, and finally Potentiating future activities though some explosive or coordination based movements. • Good coaches use the warm up to generally prepare the body physically for the main content of the session. • Great coaches use the warm up to set the athletes expectations for the main session content by deliberately selecting specific skills & drills to practice. • Great coaches also use the warm up to identify changes in the athletes mentality, coordination and movement capabilities and then inform the warm up content and future session content.

• The warm up is an excellent opportunity to practice basic movement skills and set a culture of attention to detail and precise movement execution on the mat. Across the last 7years my views on what a warm up session are have evolved quite a bit. To begin with a saw the Warm Up with the single focus of generally physically preparing the athletes for the activity they were about to complete. Get them generally warm, stretch of the main joints of the body and then do some more dynamic skills. Up until 2013 I was writing the Warm Up’s exclusively, however as part of an injury prevention project in Scotland Physiotherapy began screening athletes and then used the screening findings to design “pre-hab” content which would replace the general warm up for the session. I was never a big fan of the terminology “pre-hab” as I couldn’t image a Gladiator doing activation and injury prevention work prior to fighting for their life in the Colosseum. From my perspective I also saw “pre-hab” as a rather unnecessary training component – either athletes are training to meet the physical demands of their sport or they are not, why include additional injury prevention work when this is what intelligent training should be.

The “pre-hab” may have been designed to reduce/prevent injuries but it left athletes not properly prepared physically or mentally for the sport-specific sessions. In 2014 I moved jobs and the term “pre-hab” had kind of stuck in this environment too, until this year actually when coaches agreed that “Warm Up” was a better term and that we were, in fact warming up. Today I see the warm up has having many key aims. The first aim is that the warm up is an opportunity to prime that athlete’s mindset for the specific session they are about to take on. I do this by focusing on individual movement skills, partner compliant movement skills or partner evasive skills depending on what session the coach had designed on that day. By priming the mindset hopefully the coach can optimise the time spent in session as the athletes are ready to go as soon as I hand them over. Additionally, I have set expectations through drill design and coaching cues/behaviours to make the athlete is aware of the session intensity will be so they are focused and this should reduce injury potential.

Secondly, I see the warm up as an opportunity assess the movement quality of the athletes and then use this assessment to inform the mobility & activation components of the warm up. To do this I use basic squat, lunge, hip-hinge and jump & lands in sagittal, frontal and transverse planes and use variations of the movements to identify restrictions in sport-specific positions.

By consistently repeating the same basic movements every day it makes it very easy for me as the S&C coach to identify inconsistencies in athlete’s movements on a given day and deliver an intervention or investigate further. It might sound complicated but essentially if the athlete is missing some hip extension identified through lunges, or calf dorsi-flexion as identifying through squat I will include some more of this work in the mobility component of the arm up – fairly simple. Finally, I use the warm up to practice basic, foundation movement skills and I scale them across the group – the best athlete’s in the world deliver the basics better than everyone else.

It’s a key objective for us to have the best moving judo athletes in the world, therefore daily practice of jumping & landing, squatting, lunging, hip-hinging, pushing, pulling, bracing, carrying, throwing and tumbling ensure the athletes we support do the basics better than anyone else. This means that we can shape athlete expectations so that on the mat there is a culture of high quality, precise movement and we can set the weight room expectations as that of heavy and explosive training for developing high force and velocity. Anyway please see below the quick historical trip throughout my Warm Ups.

2010 Key Themes • Group Warm Up • Basic structure of general activity, into stretching, finally into some explosive and movement work. • Session always begins with some general movement or game to increase heart rate. • Foam rolling has just come out so lots incorporated this into general mobility with utilised both static and dynamic stretching. • Activation work includes explosive work and then some individual gymnastic skills followed by partner compliant skills.

2011 Key Themes • Group Warm Up • R.A.M.P Protocol (raise, activate, mobilise, potentiate) • Dynamic stretching to improve joint and range of movement and not impact rate of force development. • Dynamic Mobility (range of movement with control) using mostly sport-specific movements. • Potentiation involving fast-SSC jumps followed by sport-specific movements. • Final component sport-specific drills to blend into primary session content.

2013 Key Themes • Individual & Group “Pre-hab” • This was the first time we had athletes complete a physiotherapy screening so we took the key findings and designed a “pre-hab” session. • Athletes had a sheet which put them in a “shoulder” or “knee” group so would complete the exercises from the group they were in. • Single leg hopping game with hand-eye coordination component as the coaches thought most athletes were deficit in this basic skill. • The physio at the time didn’t believe the athletes needed more range, instead they required more control & strength through their existing range so there was no mobility component but instead lots of general activation.

• We included static stretching post session which I delivered to address the joint range improvements which the technical coach wanted. • 2014 Key Themes • Group Warm Up • Usually some constrained intensity warm up to gently increase heart rate and temperature. • Large focus on total body range of movement, with particular focus on hips. • Lower limb “reactive” balance focus with non-compliant partner disrupting movement using sagittal, frontal and transverse hops. • High speed potentiation with ballistic lower body, upper body and change of direction.

2015 Key Themes • Group Warm Up followed by 15mins Individual “Pre-hab” to build athlete ownership • Session is briefed with short 2-3minutes introduction into how knee & shoulder injuries occur for example what the undesired observables are with respect to foot, knee, hip & trunk position and in which throws these occur. • Specific focus on Medial Gluteus abduction strength as well as scapular positioning during single arm pushing.

• Mobility focus on pec minor length and shoulder end of range control by utilising overhead positions with judo belt. Large focus on thoracic extension and rotation to reduce forces around shoulder during throws.

• Daily balance work due to the findings from the physiotherapy screening • Partner based change of direction drills to promote reading body positions to anticipate partners movements. • Develop posture and shoulder strength at end of range using “loaded” exercises. • At the end of this group warm up athlete were either in trunk, shoulder or lower limb groups depending on their screening test results and then would complete individual exercises. 2016 Key Themes • Group Warm Up • Basic Movement Screening at the beginning of the session to inform subsequent content and prioritise time. • Significant focus on basic lower body movement competency (jump, squat, lunge, 1-leg squat, hip hinge) due to high number of junior & visually impaired athletes attending sessions. • Consistent lower limb stretch-shortening cycle (SSC) development with mixture of double leg & single leg slow-SSC and double leg fast-SSC exercises always on a Monday when athletes are fresh. • Opportunity prime subsequent sport-specific session based on its content i.e.

Prior to fighting session typically partner evasive skills will be developed, prior to technical session individual gymnastic skills will be developed. Hopefully the above has been useful and provided some context as to my thought progression as to how warm ups can be used in addition to simple getting the body ready for activity.

Cheers Allan. Understanding specificity and transfer of training to competition is, for most, the holy grail of sports performance. The collaboration between sport coaches and sport science & sport medicine staff should ultimately derive some pragmatic training interventions which positively impact competition performance. Listening to a podcast by David Joyce a few months ago, he mentioned the Chinese philosophy of competition simulation every Friday. By simulating competition, or indeed making training harder, for example physically harder, psychologically harder, technically-tactically harder than competition, it means competition appear “normal” – ultimately we should have athletes with some reserve capacity above what is required from competition. I’ve created a simple checklist for technical coaches, which can help them assess the specificity, and potentially “transfer” of their session design.

It’s important to note that just because a session might not be high on the specificity checklist doesn’t mean its not a good session, or that the skills gained are not transferable to competition – however during competition periods the closer we can replicate, and overload, competition then more normal the competition will appear. For example, an athlete may be performing a 5minute training contest and the coach rotates in a new, fresh opponent to fight every 60seconds – which is not specific to a competition. However, it would overload the intensity of the contest thus making a normal contest with the same opponent for 5minutes physically easier. Both a hammer and a saw are good tools, and like “Specific training”, which is also a tool, it’s how you use them that is important. Using the checklist is easy: Go through each component and score 1-3 depending on some criteria you have set, which is evidence-based to be specific for your sport. For example if the session intensity had Lactate reading of >10mmol/L, we know this is the contest zone so we would put a “3” in the box next to highly specific, leaving the somewhat specific box and general box empty.

However if the session was a low intensity technical session, a “1” would be scored in the general box and the highly specific and somewhat specific boxes kept blank. Add up the total score at the end and you’ll see how close your session simulated competition.

The template can be downloaded below and is easily modified for other sports alongside what it takes to win in that particular sport. Hopefully this gets you thinking about your training session design and give you some ideas of some of the variables that can be manipulated to achieve the desired improvements in your athletes. Cheers Allan.