Hi people
of the world,
I am flying
back to Italy after a long month in an insanely hot London. Our planet is
starting to have a fever - hopefully Mr. Trumpet and the others will start to
realize this soon. 30+ degrees, little wind, very sunny. It might also just be
a delayed effect of my stay in Thailand of course.
Man, that
sun is still following me around like a Gongoro*.
These days
have just been intense – either from the inside out: giving lectures and
delivering classes, and from the outside in: being evaluated, studying hard and
attending strength and conditioning conferences. From dawn to dusk, it was a
100% immersion in this academic world. Squeezing training in my schedule has
been harder than usual due to the overall CNS fatigue.
The
sessions have been running early in the mornings, at lunch time, and late in
the evenings. Usually strength training first, parkour/movement research/practice
second, handbalancing and mobility in the evenings. My left OAHS is catching up
with the right – 5 secs are consistent now. Back down dominant side, you will
not control my practice!
I started integrating some of the material from the movement camp too. Some organic strength training, some feet-hands connections and eye-hands coordination with les tennis balls. Sharp and loose, sharp and loo..damn, lost it.
I have been
living with my girlfriend in an apartment close to a river and a huge park in Twickenham.
On my way back from university, I could track down foxes and wild dogs.
I seriously
risked my existence during an encounter with a pack of gooses under a bridge I
was climbing one night. Satanic beasts, they might even be carnivores.
Let’s get
into what happened this month. I am gonna break it down:
Dan Cleather and Jon Goodwin– Critical thinking
and research methods
We are all
biased in the way we think and so are the reasons why we choose one option over
another. Bearing this in mind can help a lot guiding our choices and the
analysis of the results of our practices. Difficult material to digest but essential
for the everyday life and flawless research. As a side effect, this full immersion
is shedding more light into my current paradigms and it is expanding my coaching
philosophies.
Thinking
fast and slow is a greatly recommended read on the topic. Also, studying stats
is essential to understand how to evaluate papers, just another tool in the
box.
I also had
a super nice chat with Dan at the beginning of the week about his tai chi’s
teacher that practices in a hidden school in Camden. He has a few disciples and
a direct line of transmission from many generations back in the vast China. We
talked about softness and other features I would not normally expect by many. I
must say it surprised me. The next time it will be my first stop in the city. The
eyes can see what the words can’t say.
Jon talked
us through many agility / change of direction drills used to develop speed in
different sports. Easy approach, limited, but effective for performance.
Dan John – Building a capacity
He has been
overall such a good guy. He was an open book for all the attendees, he was
there before and after the lectures for questions and chats. As a disk thrower
in youth and a S&C coach both for sport and for the military he saw many
approaches. A lot of moons went by.
He
presented his condensed approach to training athletes for performance.
He broke
down the basics to be made of pushing, pulling, hinging, squatting and loaded
carries. He argues that the main topics to cross such macro categories and to
translate them into practice should be planking movements (not iso only), strength
and hypertrophy work, anti-rotational work, triads and Olympic lifts.
It was clear
to me that his decisions while building this matrix were extremely influenced
by the experiences he made in his life, but hey, who isn’t. Alongside to this,
he presented a huge variety of topics that I won’t list here, but that went
from the art of coaching all the way to marketing.
If you have
a chance, go listen to one of his speech, the way he presents concepts is
probably the most interesting thing about him.
Personally,
I talked with him about the relations between Tension – Arousal – Relaxation and
how to achieve the right amount of these when different situations ask for
diverse demands. I will email him soon to dig deeper in this field, that might
be the most interesting topic
Dan Baker – Training analysis.
Regarding
strength, Dan uses barbells, bars and accelerometers. He has been researching
into the field of velocity based training. He found that each lift has a failing
velocity, and that that failing velocity is always the same on your last RM rep.
This means
that if you find your 1RM velocity, that is the same as your last rep of any
other RM. For example, the 10th rep of a 10RM is @the same velocity
as in the 3rd rep of a 3RM.
The RPE
method becomes much more reliable in this way. By looking at your velocity you
will be able to guess (95%) how many more reps you still have in the tank.
I would not
use accelerometers during my trainings or my students’ trainings but accessing
those devices occasionally is a good way to understand how good is our eye at
picking the actual velocity of a push or of a pull. I am SURE that a good teacher
can do all this with his bare visual skills, but yes, telling a student to leave
three reps in the tank without instructing him/her first it’s madness.
Regarding
conditioning the guy’s using a lot of work with the MAS (Maximal Aerobic Speed),
that is the lowest velocity where VO2 max occurs. He argues that it
is a much more useful tool than the VO2 max and he saw good results
with elite rugby players. Check out his researches, nice stuff.
The rest
Well besides from all this we digged into
weightlifting, programming, practice based evidence with bullshit detectors, biomech
modelling and so on and on. I won’t spoil the game to those who want to study
this MSc, but I greatly recommend it (check it out here). Even a higher level than expected overall and very satisfied with my
choices.
On the last day, I presented a project upon
training transfer after an extensive research into the literature: what do we
know now? why does it occur and how this entangles with the more recent
dynamical systems theories and constraint led approaches to coaching?
I might do a blog post in the future about this.
I might do a blog post in the future about this.
Next year we
will dig deeper and deeper into program design and critical evaluation of those
who are available out there. Can’t wait to get this started.
For the St.
Mary’s people, I might be back in September to present some of my parkour/movement
related research to some students, if I can squeeze it into my schedule. I
managed to scratch the surface already with some of them, let’s see what will happen
at the end of summer.
If you want
to be updated with some of my work, the next place you’ll find me is Valbondione,
Italy. As ParkourWave, we’re running an event called JungleWave Camp. If you
have never been with us, expect some tough few days. It all starts in three
days, on the 29th of July. Come join us!
I will be
presenting drills for the development of speed and agility without using any
weight. The exercises will be scaled for any level of movement practice.
Either
you are Elaine Thompson or you rarely take a couple of steps out of your tiny
dirty apartment, you will find good material to use. I will also talk about how
to reset some good balance in the shoulders’ joints and introduce some theories
about qualitative training analysis and how to apply this concept properly.
After that I head to Vienna for the brand new
workshop “Motion” by the good Ido Portal’s team (check it out here you might still find some few spots left).
Until next
time,
Marcello.
*Old
African legend. A zombie. It doesn’t matter how far you run away from it, it
will catch you.
