Best In The UK

Congratulations to Tim Parkin on reaching a new personal best pole vault height of 4m 20cm at this weekends competition at Sheffield. Tim is now ranked as the No1 U17 Pole Vaulter in the UK. The coaching team at GENR8 Fitness have been working with Tim since October at our facility in Newcastle and we have been helping him literally go from strength to strength in his training, both in the gym and out on the track. This was Tim's third competition and the result topped off a hat trick of successes. The GENR8 team wish Tim all the best for the 2008 outdoor season.

Sporting Shoulder Symposium

I've just returned from the Sporting Shoulder Symposium where I presented two sessions on the role of strength and conditioning in shoulder rehab. It was a pleasure to be invited to attend and present at this event not least to be on the same programme as some of the worlds leading authorities on shoulder rehab.

The 3 day event was a fantastic success and the sessions included a combination of seminars, practical workshops and live surgery! The list of presenters looked like the who's who of shoulder research including, Alex Castagna, Tim Uhl, Don Buford, Jo Gibson and Lennard Funk. I was the loan strength and conditioning coach in a room full of surgeons, medics and physiotherapists - I survived, even after this keeping this qoute in my presentation!

"Medical and health care professionals (surgeons, doctors, physiotherapists etc.) are experts at getting injured people healthy – they are not experts at training people!"

The message was well received and the feedback from the audience was very positive - many of whome left with a greater understanding of the role of the strength and conditioning coach in the rehabilitation process.

Many thanks to Lennard Funk for inviting me to such a fantastic event. I'll leave you with some words of wisdom from Don Buford's presentation on the overhead atheltes shoulder.

"Half of what we believe is wrong - the problem is we don't know which half!"

The take home message - keep on reading ensuring that you don't believe everything you read, or only read everything you believe!

Five Things People Get Wrong When It Comes To Recovery And Regeneration

1. Not having a recovery and regeneration strategy.

‘The hardest thing for an athlete to do is not to train. You can’t sit still. You feel you should be out there working’ Graham Obree – World Champion Cyclist

Not having a recovery strategy is the biggest mistake you can make. We all have mobile phones, I-pods and laptops and they all run off batteries. If we don’t charge the batteries they won’t work. The human body is no different; we need to take time out to recharge the batteries. Work alone is not enough to produce the best results. Athletes need time to adapt to training. To encourage adaptation to training it is important to plan recovery activities that reduce residual fatigue. The sooner you recover from fatigue and the fresher you are when you complete a training session, the better the chance of improving. Increasing rate of recovery increases ability to train.

2. Concentrating on the percentage points.

Change allows the field to stay interesting for us but it’s easy to get caught up looking for the next big thing. Everyone focuses on getting the ‘edge’, looking for the one thing that will make the difference. They concentrate so hard on the 2% that they forget about the other 98%. Get the fundamentals of recovery sorted before you go for the fancy stuff. Walking round in compression garments all day is not going to help recovery of you have crappy nutrition; crappy training programmes and you don’t take time to rest (active and passive). Use the recovery pyramid (details can be found in Recovery and Regeneration: The Essential Guide to Training Without Falling Apart)

3. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting to get a different result!

Prolonged use of any given means of restoration (recovery) will decrease the recuperative effect. Eastern block experts recommend that the same recovery strategy should not be applied more than once or twice a week in the same form (Mel Siff – Supertraining). You wouldn’t do the same type of training year round, so why do people invest in one recovery strategy. Fatigue is multi factorial and there are a number of different recovery strategies that you should use depending on the type of fatigue you are suffering from.

4. Not keeping a training diary.

One of the simplest things you can do to improve your recovery from training is to keep a training diary. A good training diary can act as an early warning system sending out red flags that highlight when you need to pull back from training. Training diaries don’t need to be complicated; you just need to keep one. Keep a track of the quality of your resting heart rate; sleep quantity and quality, energy levels, training quality, motivation, health and nutrition.

5. Thinking that it’s what you do immediately after training that is important.

You need to think about recovery and regeneration as a 24-hour thing. You will train for say 1-2 hours per session maybe 3-5 times a week. Most people will then only think about recovery immediately after the training session and will devote say 30 minutes to some form of recovery. That’s just 1.5-2.5 hour per week of focused recovery, which leaves 165.5-166.5 hours when you are not thinking about recovery. You do the maths! You need to become a 24-hour athlete and make sure you are taking care of all the recovery guidelines highlighted in Recovery and Regeneration: The Essential Guide to Training Without Falling Apart

Happy New Year

Happy New Year - I hope 2008 brings you everything you are hoping for. It was interesting to sit with my daughter this morning playing in our front room - every now and then we watched one of our neighbours run past the house - I've counted 4 so far, non of whome I've ever seen go for a run before. Now I'm not knocking it, all power to them if they have decided to get fit in 2008 - I just wish they would take the advice of people like Alwyn Cosgrove and get fit for running rather than trying to run to get fit. Over the next couple of days people all around the country will be dusting off their trainers and taking to the streets, only to return home with sore shins and knees, vowing never to run again - bang goes the New Year resolution and any plans of regaining their fitness.

Why does everyone think that running is the first step to a new active lifestyle? Most of the clients that I see coming into the gym have poor conditioning and usually need at least 4-6 weeks of general conditioning before we even begin to think about taking to the streets for a run. If you want to get fit - get strong first and then take to the streets.

Have a great 2008.