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Alan Pope - Strength and Conditioning Coach for High Performance Athletes at Exeter University.
67 Plays4 years ago
In this episode UKTriChat lead Matt Upston (@MattUpston) talks Strength and Conditioning with Alan Pope (@itsbeef).
Alan is a S&C Coach for the HighPerformance Athletes at Exeter University.
Matt and Alan talk about:
Building Strength and Conditioning into your week
What S&C to do as a runner
About kit worth buying to use at home
and more.....
Enjoy this episode and feel free to send any questions on Twitter to Alan on @itsbeef
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to UK Run Chat Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to another UK run chat podcast. My name is Matt Epson. I'm one of the team here and I'm being joined tonight by Alan Papal as I know him, Beef, who's a good friend of mine but also as an SNC coach. So good evening Alan. Good evening Matthew. We'll start formal shall we?
00:00:22
Speaker
go downhill as before. So the whole idea of this podcast today is to talk about your job and your role, but also use some of your experience to pass on to some of our listeners. For those, I'll let Beef introduce himself, but I'll kind of build him up a little bit first.
00:00:38
Speaker
I've known B for quite a few years now and he is my fountain of knowledge and the person who always nags me if I'm doing something wrong, but also gives me lots of advice and support. A lot of them I don't listen to and I should do, but he helps out as much as I can.
Alan's Career and Role as SNC Coach
00:00:53
Speaker
So over to you, B. Do you want to tell a bit about what you do and where you work and what you've been up to really since you started your career? Yeah, of course mate. So I've been employed at university for the next sort of
00:01:07
Speaker
coming up 30 years now, initially within general sport and fitness with a little bit of PT. But for the last 16 years, predominantly working as an SNC coach on our high performance program. So they've diverse and varied job each year with new intakes. Very fortunate enough to work with a lot of very good young athletes.
00:01:33
Speaker
some that have moved on to junior, senior and Olympic competitions. And that varies from the kind of mainstream rugby, hockey, tennis, right through to triathlon and things like Paralympic shooting, wheelchair basketball, etc. So within that role as well, I've spent some time working for the English English Sport as a kind of consultant coach.
00:02:00
Speaker
four years down at Plymouth with the elite diving team down there when Andy Banks ran the likes of Tom Daley, Brooke Groudon, etc. So yeah, it's all ever-changing, ever-evolving job, but you know, 30 years in, still enjoying it.
Integrating SNC in Sports
00:02:20
Speaker
Brilliant. So for those who don't know what an SNC coach is, what is SNC? So strength conditioning
00:02:28
Speaker
in real terms encompasses the out of competition. So the non-playing days, physical development of an athlete. So that will be their strength work in the gym, their flexibility, mobility, any rehab, pre-hab work, their cardio training. So whether we're at some machines and bikes and in the gym or out on the pitch, it's everything that kind of builds an athlete up ready for competition.
00:02:59
Speaker
That sounds good. That does sound very good, isn't it? And obviously on a personal note, we do a lot of riding together. We cycle together quite a lot and do a few bits of challenges. Talk a bit about yourself and what your kind of sports background or sporting interests are. When I was competitive, it was mostly rugby, but also played a fairly competitive cricket volleyball
00:03:25
Speaker
Dabbled with a little bit of football, but since retiring from rugby, it's mostly been around cycling triathlon. Dabbled with a little bit of distance running. Did the London mouth in 2010, but they kind of timed that one on a calendar as opposed to a watch. So at 6'5", 125 kilograms, I'm not exactly your standard endurance athlete, but the body's slowing up, so I might as well move to longer slower events.
00:03:55
Speaker
I think we both know that, we're both in that same similar situation. The reason we all call him Beef is also, is because Beef is,
Hosts' Interests and Running Experiences
00:04:02
Speaker
as he said, is six foot five and 125 kilograms, but he's also vegetarian. So this is where the Beef has come from. I've only never known you as Beef. I don't think I ever got introduced to you by a name, Alan. It feels really weird when you come up with my face. Yeah, I picked the nickname up at college. When people, when they found out I was vegetarian, it was either Beef or Lentil, and it doesn't really work when you're this sort of size.
00:04:25
Speaker
No. So it's stuck. Very few people actually call me Alan apart from parents if I've done something wrong. Yeah, it's stuck around and we get used to it now. And we could all say, you know, the other thing we do have a great passion for is coffee. So we can spend the most of this podcast talking about coffee, to be honest, but we'll try not to. We'll try and keep on track. I was hoping you'd suggest this as a morning one so I could have a coffee. Let's see later.
00:04:50
Speaker
Yeah, I know. It just didn't fit in really well, very well. I was thinking about having a coffee while we did this, but I think it's a bit too late now. We're filming this in the evening, well, recording this in the evening, so it's definitely not a coffee time now for me. So, yeah, so have you run today? You know from when we spoke before we started recording this, I went out this morning and 3K in, my hamstrings were screaming at me, so thanks for your humility.
00:05:17
Speaker
No, it's fine. Because I run out. Obviously we're recording this for the start of December and there's quite a few challenges on which we'll go on to later. But I'm on my second day of running after quite a long break as well. So I struggled along and didn't do greatly neither. So we're both in the same boat. You didn't struggle with your 10K yesterday? No. Well, it was 8K with a 2K cooldown just to make it up to 10K. It wasn't exactly 10K.
00:05:47
Speaker
Yeah, it wasn't pretty though, I can say. If you see me afterwards, it definitely wasn't pretty. Anyway, let's get back on to SNC. So where does it fit in? Like, is it for training? So for example, for a runner or a cyclist or a triathlete, how do they fit that into their lifestyle or into their training? Is it instead of running or
Strength Training and Myths in SNC
00:06:06
Speaker
how do they do that? I think if you look at, if I look at the whole of SNC, it's
00:06:13
Speaker
The theory behind it is it fits into complement an athlete's sport. So whether it is an amateur runner, you're a triathlete, a cyclist, hockey, cricket, netball, whatever it is, it's there to support it so that your performance on game day, race day can be as good as possible. But it's, especially with endurance athletes, it tends to be a little bit of a, oh, it's going to make me sore if I lift weights.
00:06:42
Speaker
but it's all down to what you lift, how you lift and where you fit into your program. So there needs to be consideration for the time of year that you're doing it and within that timeframe, the nature of what you're doing. So it complements all the other training.
00:07:00
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that's the big thing for me is I always think about it as about I don't want to put on weight and I don't want to kind of train. I always see S&C as weight training or throwing weights around the gym. I guess that's because of thinking about weight training rather than S&C. But you're saying it isn't. It's all about kind of complimenting that. It's not around kind of weight training for weight's sake. It's thinking about using that to strengthen the body. Is that right? Yeah, I think weight training has always been linked to bodybuilding in that it puts on mass.
00:07:30
Speaker
But in theory, endurance athletes, it's not about how much you can lift, it's how well you lift it, and what that exercise is actually doing for your strength in your sport, your technique, your form, whatever you want to call it. So it's purely there to enhance. I wouldn't get an endurance athlete to go in
00:07:53
Speaker
deadlift 300 kilograms or bench 180 because what's the one rep of that going to do for them apart from injure them? So it's all about conditioning the body, tissue tolerance, it's getting the athlete's body ready to do hundreds or if not thousands of repetitions of the same movement which for run triathlete or triathlon and swim etc.
00:08:20
Speaker
It's all about repeating a movement time and time again, safely and effectively. Cool. I know, because we had a bit of fun, didn't we? A couple of years ago, we took the UK run chart team, the EXO team, that we, yeah, we had a bit of a session in the gym, didn't we, together with you? That was quite an interesting evening. You know what? It was probably one of the most fun sessions I've done in years. It was, if you know what I'm saying, in any of the EXO group that were on there, it's a very diverse group.
00:08:49
Speaker
And the focus of it was to try and get people to understand that one of the most under-used and under-trained muscle groups on an athlete is the glutes. And we sat there, lied, poked, prodded. We made, if you know what I'm saying, complete arses of ourselves. And it was two hours of just constant giggle and everyone left.
00:09:16
Speaker
Glutes were fired, people understood why the glutes need to be trained as an individual muscle group but also as part of a chain of muscles and how that can enhance performance but also help minimize injury risk.
00:09:35
Speaker
Yeah, I think my lasting thought from that evening was not only you starting off the evening with your Texas cowhorn pose with your fingers, and asking everyone to kind of check their partners firing glutes and hamstrings, which was a good start to the evening. But also, as you said, UK Run Chat Exeter is a running club, for those who don't know, that's kind of linked to UK Run Chat, run by myself. And we have a real diverse team, and one of our athletes is blind.
00:10:04
Speaker
So I think the classic point is his birthday, I think it was his birthday. And there was a pile of chocolate in the middle of the room as like a birthday present kind of thing. And as he was moving around with resistance bands, doing his, what drill was it? Yeah, and he stood on all the chocolates, he crushed all the Maltesers. So I think that was quite funny. But yeah, it was a great night. And I think for me, it really made me realise that actually,
00:10:31
Speaker
It isn't about weights. It's more about body weight. It can be more about holding position. It is also, it made me really realize it's something I've always struggled with is I don't use my, I do underfire my glutes massively. And it's kind of, there's times when I think about that and I try and refocus on it and think about some of the stuff you taught us. It's very simply trained, very easily trained. I was listening to a podcast over the weekend of a Canadian triathlon coach.
00:11:00
Speaker
and he'd interviewed Ryan Hall. Now Ryan Hall is a multi Olympian, he's a sub 60 minute half marathon and a sub 205 full marathon. So just a little bit quicker than us then?
00:11:18
Speaker
Yeah, I've done a half inside what he's done a mouth in, but he looked a lot better there. He just retired now from competitive running and he's gone from a guy who was like 57, 58 kilograms at his racing weight.
00:11:35
Speaker
no up to 81 kilograms. Now that's, let's do the maths on that. That's probably all about a 50% increase up around there. And he said that the biggest discovery we made when he went into the gym and started lifting was how weak his glutes were. Now we're talking about a guy here that was over mouth. And if you take a simple example, if a runner, and I know it's going to be a longer stride, but if a runner takes one meter every step,
00:12:03
Speaker
her mouth and he's hitting 42,000 steps, 21 on each leg. Think of the impact that's going through that body. And the bulk of that is going to be going through the glutes. They absorb, they produce. And it's a hinge point for the body and for when running. You know, when we did this workshop with the Exeter group,
00:12:29
Speaker
There's an analogy, and Matt will know, and the coaches I work with will understand this. I'm a big one for analogies, and it helps athletes understand the principle and the coaching points that you're trying to get across. And the analogy is, if you imagine that you're trying to drive from down here in Devon to Glasgow, and then you imagine that map taken is the body. You're going from a toe up to the head.
00:12:56
Speaker
Now picture if there's a roadblock near Birmingham, Spaghetti Junction is a log jam, so traffic has got to be diverted around it. That's the same principle with an athlete's glutes a week and don't have a particularly good response to what's being asked of it when exercised. So as opposed to traffic queuing up north and south of Spaghetti Junction,
Customized SNC Training for Athletes
00:13:21
Speaker
If an athlete's got poor glutes or weak glutes, their lower back and their hamstrings are going to have to do a lot more work. So by training the glutes and getting them stronger and firing more efficiently and effectively, it can reduce injuries but also help with power output so athletes can potentially run faster.
00:13:40
Speaker
Yeah, because as you know well know, I struggle with my lower back and I think that's all linked to the fact that I use, I don't use my glutes and it's quite simple. I don't use my glutes. So yeah, so let's kind of think about that. So how do we know what to do? How often and how much? So what do we know? How do we know what we need to train? And yeah, and how frequently should we be doing it? Well, the nature of training for endurance athletes
00:14:10
Speaker
would very much judge by if they are competitive or if they're recreational. Competitive will have a season and that would need to be, their S&C programme would need to be periodised around that. So they're not lifting heavyweights in the lead up to a race. That would be more about getting them fired, shorter, sharper, quicker movements. Whereas your more recreational athlete can probably be able to carry some form of
00:14:39
Speaker
resistance training throughout the year and just taper slightly before any park went on Saturday, you're not going to do a heavy weight session on a Friday night, or if you've got a half marathon coming up, you would look to drop off the loading week 10 days beforehand. But the bulk of
00:14:58
Speaker
The training needs to be focused around what joints are put under stress, what muscle groups are taking the biggest hit. So with running, for example, you're going to be looking at casts, quads, hamstrings, glutes, lower back. So it's about building tissue tolerance and muscular endurance into those areas. But it doesn't take a load of kit. I think that's one of the big misconceptions you can see is that you've got to have a full gym.
00:15:27
Speaker
You can literally do a training session at home with diner bands or theo bands, swiss ball, some ankle bands and some light weights, even something as simple as a rucksack with a bag of potatoes on for back, front squats, etc. So it's more flexible than people think it is.
00:15:50
Speaker
Yeah I can say because I think obviously coming out of lockdown number two and kind of experiencing lockdown number one people have been training lots more at home and I think getting used to training far more at home it was quite funny when you looked at the sales of sports equipment including gym equipment through lockdown one I think it all got sold out pretty much straight away. Absolutely mad and I've got contacts within the the industry with equipment obviously through the job
00:16:18
Speaker
And, you know, you buzz them and say, any chance you've got any Dynabands? And you said, yeah, we've got some coming in next month. And I'm thinking we need them now. Can't get them. Can't get them. Everyone has gone out. I happen to buy a Wattbike over the summer. I know, I break everything in a Wattbike. It may hurt. It hurts. But I sat there for week upon week thinking, do I invest? Do I invest? And the price of these bikes were going up beyond that. And I was looking on eBay and they're going up beyond what they were costing brand new.
00:16:48
Speaker
I think there's one thing lockdown has done is people are finding very creative ways of getting their fitness and getting their fix of exercise at home, which hopefully I'm not wishing to take business away from gyms, et cetera, but it could kickstart a stronger health regime, shall we say. Yeah, I know we're going a bit off target, off kind of a little bit of a tangent, but I think the gyms seem to be
00:17:17
Speaker
quite niche and I think people are looking at other ways of doing stuff now aren't they? I think you get people training in the park or with friends doing that kind of stuff and having a PT in that environment rather than going to a gym.
00:17:32
Speaker
and doing the training as a gym, it's quite interesting that it's all changed. 10 years ago, people would have just gone to gyms and that would have been it. There's also the uncertainty of how long is it going to be that we're in this next lockdown or system and when can we go out and when is going to life going to return to some form
Exercises and Techniques for Runners
00:17:51
Speaker
of normality. But in the meantime, train at home and get it done.
00:18:01
Speaker
So, general person who's a runner, what do you reckon then, what should we be looking, what kind of stuff would you suggest they might look at? And I mean, obviously there's loads of stuff on YouTube and so that they could take for a bit of advice on how to complete the tasks. But what kind of things do you think might be worthwhile looking at for running? Well, with a bit of predominantly lower body
00:18:23
Speaker
exercise it's you've got to look at the simple fact that when an athlete runs and this is breaking it down into its crudest form they spend 33% of their time on one left leg 33% of the time on the right leg and 33% of the time in the air so training single leg get in there
00:18:43
Speaker
Single leg squats and you can do them. If you're fortunate enough that you can do them to a decent depth so you get the firing patterns effective, do so. But things like suspension training, so the big brand out there is TI-X. Use those, use support, use back of a chair, use the worktop in the kitchen. Try and get some single leg work done. Into lunges, hops,
00:19:11
Speaker
They sound very basic, but I think a lot of coaches and PTs tend to go in, like, I want to show this athlete, I know what I'm talking about, I'm going to throw these real complex exercises at them. But if we can't get the basics right, we're just trying to load up something which isn't capable of taking that sort of movement.
00:19:33
Speaker
control or load. So keep it simple, squats, lunges, squat variations, split squats, all those sort of things are going to help you build a stronger base for when you're in contact with the ground. Once that strength level gets to certain points, you're then able to develop more power out of it.
00:19:56
Speaker
But obviously with more power, you need more control when you land. So you're constantly playing catch up, but in a positive way. So you're getting stronger, you can then get more powerful, you can then get faster. But we also really look at the core. Exercises like front plank, go up into press up position.
00:20:19
Speaker
feet, hip width behind you, hands on the shoulders and then slowly take your hand up. I'm doing the exercise now as I say. Take your hand up, shoulder, control it down, keep the body straight.
00:20:32
Speaker
Great for developing core strength through the glutes, the hamstrings, the stomach, the lower back, shoulder stability as well. So any triathletes that are listening now, obviously the shoulder takes a real beating with swimming with that repetitive movement. So we need to develop tissue tolerance into there as well. But there's encyclopedias out there that give breakdown on exercises and I'm quite happy to put a list together for you guys to have in the show notes.
00:21:01
Speaker
but it's all about keeping it varied, keeping it interesting, and keeping some form of challenge in there. It's very easy for a coach to sit down and say, right, there's eight weeks of that program.
00:21:13
Speaker
guarantee after two weeks they're going to be bored. So yeah. And I know our friend Andy, who will probably, he's going to do a podcast with me at some point. We'll probably have something to say about that as well. Cause obviously it's got to be dynamic in, in, in react, reactive to people's lifestyle and how they're weak and, you know, yeah, it's difficult. Um, I don't, I'm not a great believer in picking up a, uh, you can get off the training programs off, off the offline or, um, from magazines and so on. They are very generic. It doesn't always fit, does it?
00:21:43
Speaker
There's sort of a purpose, but what we try and do with our world as an SNC coach is look at athletes as individuals, not as a team or a squad, because everyone's going to have their restrictions in their range of movement, how well they can squat. If an athlete can't get a good range of movement, we need to look at it and say, what's the determining factor? Is it hip? Is it ankle?
00:22:09
Speaker
and try and make adjustments to that and develop them so that they can get an optimum range of movement. But online it's very difficult. Pictures on a web page don't really tell you much in the way of technique. There will be some text with it, but it doesn't give you any real cues for you to think about whether it's an internal or an external cue. Drop the hip down, keep the knees in line with the toes, head up, shoulder back.
00:22:40
Speaker
with coaching we're able to talk an athlete through correct as we go without giving them too much information and getting them to focus on little points. Yeah it's all about functional movement isn't it? I mean there's a PT teacher I'm quite keen on my physical literacy and functional movement it's just continuing on that skill isn't it of making sure you're doing the movement correctly but also you're doing it to be effective. It's very easy to go out there and do
00:23:06
Speaker
three sets of 10 on an exercise. But if only three of those 10 are good quality, you might as well drop the rest. So it's always quality over quantity. If you do an exercise well, you can progress. So yeah.
00:23:25
Speaker
So if you were, so with your, say you had a running athlete who was kind of just a average runner going out, they do their part runs, they do their training for the half marathon and marathon and so on. How often do you reckon they should be putting some kind of S and C into their program?
00:23:42
Speaker
What do you reckon they, you know, as a rough guesstimate? Should we be doing this like every other day? Should we be once a week? What are you thinking? To be fair, spread it out of the week. There are many exercises that we get athletes to do before they do their sport. So an exercise such as crab walk or a bandit wants to walk is designed to get the glutes firing. Now, that being done before they go off to do a pitch session or a skill session on a hockey pitch,
00:24:13
Speaker
is great because the muscles are ready to go and they're fully expecting the load and the challenge is going to be put through them. So by doing exercises like your monster walks, your hamstring swings, even some pogo, some double footed jumps, just get the muscles used to what you're going to ask of them when you go out for a run. So it can be done as part of that training session or going back to exercises like single leg balance, single leg squats,
00:24:44
Speaker
Do them while you're doing your teeth. For most people, that's two or three minutes of a day taken up when they're doing something which is quite boring. So put something in there to fill that time gap. And that can be done with other things. If you're office bound, get up, do a set of five squats. If no one's looking, pop down, do some press-ups. Try and fill that time.
00:25:10
Speaker
Well, a lot of people are now working from home anyway, aren't they? And actually, that would be a good thing to do, because obviously...
00:25:16
Speaker
We asked the surgery quite a lot. I think people sit for a lot, much longer at home than they do when they're actually in the office because you kind of just feel you want to get on and get the day done. I noticed it myself and to kind of get into a regime of thinking, well, every half an hour I get up and do something might be a good way of doing it. And I think you'll end up picking it up without even realizing you're doing it. I mean, single leg squats, I still struggle. I still struggle to do it properly. And I think that's just why I hear your voice in the back of my head nagging me to make sure I'm doing it correctly.
00:25:46
Speaker
rather than just kind of banging them out. So I can say I've done my 10 or whatever. I think if I write with us sitting down so much and working from home now, I got up the other night and Charlotte, my other half, we said we'll do some online yoga. So YouTube came up, sat down, cross-legged. Five minutes, my hip flexors started cramping. And because they're not being used, as I would with my normal role, I'm moving around, sat down a lot more. But it's a habit that's very easy to get into and very difficult to get out of.
00:26:16
Speaker
I can't believe how many little steps I'm doing at the moment, apart from if I go out for a run. An average day for me is normally twelve and a half thousand, and I'm lucky to get anywhere near ten on a day if I don't do any running. I struggle to get sevens on. It's tough. It's been used so many times. I'm pressing at times now. We don't know how it's going to last, but we've got to start forming better habits.
00:26:45
Speaker
to make sure that we are staying physically healthy and the knock-on effect of that is mental health stays strong.
00:26:54
Speaker
Yeah, it's a bit weird, isn't it? Yeah, it's just strange. So what can we do at home then? I mean, you can allude to some bits. You know, we're at home, we've got no kit, you might be really lucky and have lots of kit at home, but you've got any ideas on what kind of things we could be doing at home and what kit we could use we might find around the house? One of the most positive things come out of the first lockdown
00:27:19
Speaker
And just to throw one name there was what the likes of Joe Wicks was doing. Home body circuits. It's so simple, but the toughest bit is actually getting the discipline to do it regularly and what to do. Now this is where, because the technical side of most home training doesn't involve a load, i.e. you haven't got a bar on your back, you haven't got a
00:27:48
Speaker
deadlift to do or something like that. They're relatively simple, so press-ups, sit-ups, squats, some form of jump, a brace, somewhere, an exercise, you've got to fight rotation and anti-rotation, try and control. So there are resources out there online which are relatively safe.
00:28:13
Speaker
but there's also a lot of coaches in the field now that have moved to online and they will be able to put together a safe and effective program for relatively small cost and would see you through for weeks if not months. Okay.
00:28:36
Speaker
So you say that the stuff online is quite good. It's worth following. I guess it comes down to how many reviews they've got and looking and just being a bit mindful. Yeah, a lot of these looking at what qualifications they've got. Within the UK, our government bodies, UK, SCA, they oversee it, strength and conditioning, and there's a very stringent process to get through for that. America's got the
00:29:04
Speaker
They've got their version, ASCA, I think it is. PTs, personal trainers over here, they have to go through an organisation called reps. So as soon as they get up to certain levels, they have quite stringent qualifications they have to have to be able to market themselves as level three, level four, et cetera, et cetera. A lot of it as well is reputation. Word of mouth is probably the best advertising you'll get.
00:29:32
Speaker
and trust people who your friends trust.
00:29:38
Speaker
Yeah, word of mouth is always good, isn't it? I think it's easier to go with someone that you know that someone else has said is really good. I think that's probably why I think gyms are going the way they are as well. I think people are kind of finding someone that seems to work well with them or work well with their lifestyle and they're picking up on that because if they can see the results better then they can sign up for a gym membership when they know full well that when they've had a rough day at work they're not going to
00:30:05
Speaker
go to the gym because they know it's busy and all those kind of issues.
Injury Prevention and Collaboration with Physios
00:30:09
Speaker
Yeah I think as well if anyone does have an injury of any sort and they're seeing a physio speak to them because most physio practices will have contacts with PTs or strength and conditioning coaches so they'll be put in the right direction.
00:30:26
Speaker
Okay, cool. So you talk about legs, you talk about kind of doing single leg squats and double leg squats and a few other bits and pieces. How should we set that up then? So you said about doing them individually within the day, so you could spread them out as the day goes on. If we want to kind of say, right, today I'm going to do some S and C, I'm going to do this as part of my session, would you kind of set up a system, would you put a routine together?
00:30:53
Speaker
route is wrong. It sounds like a dance show. I mean, if anyone saw us do dancing, they do realise it's definitely not a dance show. But how would you do it? I think the easiest way for someone to do it at home to keep it interesting is to set up some form of circuit.
00:31:09
Speaker
So look at, you know, put together six, eight exercises, put them in an order so that one exercise doesn't affect the next. So in theory, you're having almost an active recovery period in between the two. But yeah, it's a case of mixing up and keeping it interesting.
00:31:30
Speaker
With the nature of endurance sport, being repetitive, don't think you go in and just do a set of five exercises. You need to start looking at, and I know you haven't used the phrase before, but tissue tolerance. You've got to get muscles, joints and movements used to doing the same movement over and over again. It's, I can't describe it. We've also got to look at, if you're on a bike, if you're running, you're swimming,
00:32:01
Speaker
You automatically think it's just a straight line activity, but in every swim stroke, pedal stroke, run the strike, we're being challenged three-dimensionally. So we need to make sure that any of the home training you are doing or training in the gym, you need to challenge three-dimensionally. So whether that's through a lunge with a rotate and a dumbbell across in front of you, or a ball, or a small child if you've got one. I'd probably get social services onto me now.
00:32:29
Speaker
As I say, don't go and find a small charge to use as your SMT case. Make sure it's your own. A disclaimer from UK-run chat, only use a small charge if you have one in your house and please do not drop them on their hands. Keep it varied. Put the music on, close the curtains because nothing worse than circuit training in your mankini. Yeah.
00:32:52
Speaker
But yeah, keep it varied. There are millions and millions of exercises to choose from. And as long as you structure them in such a way that there is no conflict from one exercise to another, you're competent in doing the exercises and you perform them safely. It's endless, absolutely endless.
00:33:19
Speaker
Cool. So then let's move on to my injury prevention. So that's the kind of main area I've used SNC before through your guidance is to kind of help me kind of recover from injuries or kind of issues. So how can that help with injury? How can it help with injury prevention? This is a phrase I've used so many times, not just tonight, but in general work. The tissue tolerance is a key thing.
00:33:49
Speaker
If we can build endurance into, for a swimmer, for example, the shoulder joint, that's going to help prevent injuries. Very, I had a swimmer a couple of years ago. Strong Lad was a butterfly swimmer, came in and he said, shoulders are killing. A lot of pain. So went back, looked at his program and I said, nothing's really changed.
00:34:18
Speaker
I don't know what's caused the problem. What's changed in your training?" And his response was, well, nothing stayed the same. Apart from we've brought in paddles. Now, the addition of hand paddles into a swimmer's training program and someone who's not used them before, but the volume stays the same, he was in pieces. And it was simple as the forces going through that joint,
00:34:44
Speaker
were multiplied. I can't put a figure on it, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't three, four, five times the forces. And he just wasn't able to cope with it. So it's about developing strength and muscular endurance in those specific areas so that they can take what you ask or what you're throwing at them with regards to run, swim, bike volume. It's a tough one, but
00:35:13
Speaker
first sign of a niggle it's a case of saying is this is it pain which is acute i.e there's a particular spot in which case it would tend to push you more towards you've done a bit of damage in there or is it
00:35:31
Speaker
pain, which is actually, I got full movement. I can do everything on it. It's just a new exercise I've done or it's something that's made that joint challenged. So I'm very fortunate that throughout my time at my current job at the university, we've worked with the same team of physios and they are incredible. They're all, they will air or edge towards
00:36:02
Speaker
sports backgrounds and their main motivation is to get athletes back training. So the time spent with them has just allowed us to develop a much better understanding of what the athletes training or their sport is doing to certain areas of the body and when that injury is fully diagnosed they'll come back and say
00:36:25
Speaker
This is day one from diagnosis and this is where we want to see them back training. This is the route we want to take them. So without them, I can do 50% of my job. Very fortunate to work with them. And you'll find a lot of support staffs and we're looking at nutrition
00:36:49
Speaker
with time management, sports psychologists, they're so fixed on getting athletes back into competition. It's very similar to S&C, it's a passion. We don't do it for the money. With my sporting background, all I want to do is stay involved with sport and I've been very fortunate with it.
00:37:12
Speaker
Yeah, injuries are pain in the ass. I've just come back from eight months out with a niggle in Achilles, so it doesn't help. 25 kilograms going through every stride. Yeah, hence the kind of niggle at 3k today. Yeah, that was hammies.
00:37:34
Speaker
Okay because I'm hoping to get Andy from Ocean Physio on in a couple of weeks maybe and have a chat about sports injuries. I think it's quite a key topic at the moment with everyone doing extra running because they couldn't go to the gym or do anything else. I mean no matter if you've started running or are doing too much running, hence why I was injured to start first lockdown. Well we've been trying to keep our athletes, we've got 350 plus on the program and we're trying to keep them
00:38:02
Speaker
as strong and as fit as possible remotely because our facility is closed. There's been a lot of Zoom correspondence with them. A lot of fitness challenges because that helps massively. We keep it everyone motivated and they can do it from the comfort of their own home.
Athlete Motivation and Challenges During Lockdown
00:38:25
Speaker
They can do it mobile.
00:38:28
Speaker
I'm coming up now starting on the 7th, the 12th days of Christmas. So they've got, most of my athletes now will have a 1k through to 12k, 12 different runs between the 7th and the 24th. And the focus for them with that one is consistency. So those distances at the same speed. And just looking at this 80-20 principle of a lot of base work and off the base work, you can then build up
00:38:58
Speaker
Okay. So let me guess, let me get this clear in my head. It's 12 days of Christmas. I might have to go at this. Um, obviously I'm doing run up to Christmas at the moment as well, but I might combine this. So the whole idea is on one day you'll do one K.
00:39:12
Speaker
and then you might do 12k another day. So you build up your distances, you do one of each distance, but the aim is to try and do each one at the same interval k rep. So if I did my one k at five and a half minute k, then when I do my 10k, it should be the equivalent of five and a half minutes for 10 times. Absolutely.
00:39:37
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. That's quite a good idea. And I think, I guess that's consistency as well, isn't it? It's looking at that. We're all really bad at it. And it's something that I want to talk to Andy, not Andy from Ocean, but Andy from exercise science is around heart rate training and looking at consistency of training because I'm the worst one for it. I'll go out and get really upset. I've not done a decent run.
00:40:00
Speaker
but then i'll forget the fact that i've had a long day or not eating properly or i'm not feeling a hundred percent and there's all those kind of aspects to it as well isn't there but that's inconsistent you know we're not professional athletes we don't get paid to do this so i don't know of many amateur athletes whose average week
00:40:20
Speaker
is perfect with regards to training, recovery, nutrition, sleep, that fitted into family life, work commitments, which will make the best, I think if you're average athlete, can go out there and hit 75% of their targets for the week, they've done well. Yeah, it's going to be an interesting challenge. We had a lot over the first lockdown.
00:40:45
Speaker
And that was based around the fastest 5K that you can do. Then we had a team event where they had to run as far as they could in 30 minutes each. And it was which team could complete mouth and distance the quickest. I think at one point we had a Google Doc set up with 125 athletes all competing on the same day, split from different sports into new teams.
00:41:15
Speaker
It was, it was probably one of the hardest days work I did, sat there, these Strava times coming in. Strava must have worried, wonder what the hell had gone on, because I've gone from following eight or nine people up to 120, 130 of them. So, but you know, things like, you know, this summer I've got into Zwift and you're talking about heart rate training there. I haven't got one on my bike, but now that I've got power measurements coming off the Watt bike,
00:41:43
Speaker
I'm addicted to it. Yeah, it's a bit like a computer game, isn't it? FTP is three of the most dangerous letters out there. Yeah, for those runners who don't know what that is, it's a test on your power. It's a functional test. What's it stand for? In theory, an hour that you can sustain for one hour. It's a lie. And as a cyclist, FTP is kind of quite a big measure for how well you can perform.
00:42:13
Speaker
It's quite interesting. I find Swift a little bit strange in the fact that obviously I know Swift are doing something about it now, aren't they? But there's lots of people in there that play the game and put their weights and measures in differently to allow them to have a better power output. And I did read somewhere now that they get like an exclamation mark above their head of their riding because they've been recognised as being a possible cheat.
00:42:35
Speaker
it's been looked into. Somewhere over in California I think there's a little office where people are going food checking everyone's stats and whatever but you know if you go out to enjoy it and it's a bit of fun why do you need to cheat?
00:42:52
Speaker
Yeah, it's like these guys who either you hear these marathon runners who don't actually run the marathon get taxis or you have a twin, you know, there's that guys and there's a guy in America that goes through the Excel spreadsheet stats of breakdown of the kind of different points of the race. And you can pick up people who reckons that not
00:43:13
Speaker
not running or they're not doing it, they're not being fair in the way they're doing it. Yeah. It's quite, you know, as a wannabe runner, I get out there to enjoy fitness. Um, and obviously with events like parkrun and all that sort of stuff now, it's got a real community spirit about it.
Personal Fitness Goals and Balancing Life
00:43:31
Speaker
You know, I lived down in Timoth, um, get down to the seafront and you're talking everything from five year olds to 80 year olds run along the seafront. It's, uh,
00:43:41
Speaker
which is free. You know I feel about part-run being a junior part-run lead and I know you were kind of involved in Killerton weren't you in the early days of when it started? Yeah I was really fortunate that I got a mention from a couple of friends I'd run with in the past and they said oh this is part-runs looking to start up and Paul Sinterger came up to university and did a presentation
00:44:05
Speaker
for us and that was kind of where the killer one started because they found a location. But yeah, what an event, it's phenomenal development of it. And I think, you know, off the back of there, I think other bodies will or may well try and get involved in a support structure into Parkrun and I think SNC and fitness should fill one of those little niches. But if you're out there, Paul, give me a call.
00:44:32
Speaker
Yeah, that'd be good. Because Killerton was the first national trust property, wasn't it? To have a part run. It kind of set the tone. Quite cool. And obviously, Exeter, for those who don't realise, Beef and I both live in and around Exeter. We have got so many part runs now, and there's rumours of more trying to kind of them stepping up. But you can literally, before Covid, on a Saturday morning, you can get in your car and you can drive
00:44:59
Speaker
what, 20 miles at the most? And you've probably got eight or nine different park runs you could choose from. Yeah. And I know there's a group that call themselves a park run tourist and they're trying to get around all of the country. And it's just, oh, that's amazing. That's amazing. Yeah. So if you want a quick time, Xmas might be the one, isn't it? Xmas got the quickest route they reckon in England. Xmas is lovely. But the only thing is if the wind tends to go in one direction. So if you're going out into the headwind, you're going to fly back.
00:45:26
Speaker
But if you're going out with a tailwind, you're going to struggle getting back. So I just run behind you and I got a bit of a wind block. So it's fine. Yeah, but mate, I'm running a lot slower than you. So you just be constantly bumping in. So have you done a marathon yet? I have. I did one. I've done Brighton. I'm not Brighton. Sorry, Bournemouth. Bournemouth did Bournemouth. What time? Four hours and 19. Oh, I was.
00:45:54
Speaker
I was rather ill at the end. I got it completely wrong. That's what I wrote my blog about, about Hypertremius, which is an issue with suffering with lack of salts. It was a lovely hot summer's day. Well, not summer, it was late spring.
00:46:12
Speaker
i was very adamant i was not going to take the the gels or the um supplements they were having on site because i knew it might play havoc in my stomach so i was going to keep to what i was carrying and ended up over hydrating and not taking off enough salts so i felt really ill at the end i literally collapsed with the finish line and said to the baggage handler i need first aid i did london in 421 and that uh well i think that definitely makes
00:46:41
Speaker
That makes you faster than me, I think, because London is such a busy course. You can't run fast. It's amazing. I did it with a colleague at the university at the time, John Jagman, and everyone at some man said, London's OK for the atmosphere, but when you get into the Docklands, it's dead.
00:46:59
Speaker
Seriously, you could not hear yourself thinking of the Docklands. I think everyone would come out and thought, it's got its reputation, we're just going to build it up. But incredible event, absolutely amazing.
00:47:13
Speaker
Yeah, it was the same at the Bournemouth in the fact that you end up out in the industrial state and it was like soulless, like I lost it. I completely lost the will to live by that point. But yeah, it was, you know, I put in the London Marathon Ballad again this year. To be honest, I probably would be, I'm not disappointed if I don't get in, but it's one of those things I still want to probably tick off. Do you find it's habit now that you apply and you're not disappointed?
00:47:42
Speaker
yeah yeah nine nine times down nine times wow yeah so anyone in london marathon wants to give me a spot of feeling like kind of feeling um disappointed that i've not got in nine times that'd be great but obviously we've talked about doing other stuff we were going to measure we were going to be doing half iron man but then lockdown kicked in and you know i think we for me
00:48:06
Speaker
I think marathon training, I just find it really, I mean, there's other people who absolutely love running for a long, long time and kind of going out and doing those kind of long miles. I just find, I don't have the time to do it or the mental capacity to do it, he says, but then thinking about doing an Ironman, half Ironman. It's nice to train four. That's, that's, I think the one thing, since I've retired from rugby and volleyball, what have you.
00:48:30
Speaker
there's that incentive now and I think if someone turned around and said you know we did Blenheim um two years ago or last year um last year wasn't it? No no because last year's got um last year's no this year's got um has been it was 2019 and they got moved sept they got moved september didn't they and there so it wasn't this year and I don't think either of us were particularly well prepared for it
00:48:57
Speaker
No, not at all. And it went out and did it and I thought, you know, I love that. I want to have a structured programme and do another one. But then Lockdown kind of came out and it's kind of like, and then fin it in around family life, because I've, as you know, I've got Clemmy now, he's just turned two.
00:49:11
Speaker
And she's probably kept me fitter than any sport in the past. So it's trying to juggle all those things and trying to fit S&C into a weekly timetable where you've got work, family, DIY to get done at home, the in-laws court, calls in on carnage or whatever. It is difficult, but you'll feel the benefits of it.
00:49:38
Speaker
It'll be probably a little bit uncomfortable, you'll have a little bit of soreness for the first couple of weeks, but then it becomes habit and those benefits will show in your performances. I just realised I've almost just put a roadblock in the way of that conversation, then sorry man.
00:49:57
Speaker
That's all right, it's fine, I'll be cool. So yeah, let's talk about, it's Christmas isn't it? Christmas is coming up soon. We've talked about lack of kit and stuff, but so if someone was looking to put on their Father Christmas list or put on a list of things they might want to use at home to save on those gym memberships, what kind of things do you think runners should be really thinking about having as just a go-to kit for home? Okay, ankle bands.
00:50:24
Speaker
They probably cost you £2 each for different strengths, different resistances.
00:50:31
Speaker
You get some longer bands that you can use for upper bodywork. So for those who might not know what that means, an ankle band looks a bit like a children's inner tube tie, doesn't it? It's like a small circular rubber. So we've got athletes trying their glutes to put them around their ankles or their knees. You go into a quarter squat position and it's either lateral or diagonal steps.
00:51:00
Speaker
maintain intention on the band and that just keeps the glutes fired. It sounds simple but after you've done a couple of sets for the first time you'll be walking a little bit funny and you'll know that your glutes have been given a little bit of a workout.
00:51:16
Speaker
oh it killed me because we ran we ran home as well from the SSE session remember and I really struggled um yeah it was it was tough it really was tough like magic because the leaving from the sports park down that you're talking best part of a kilometer downhill so you must have been off yeah yeah but running down is far nicer than going up here i'd say i've traveled up that hill for 30 years and it's not going any flatter that's for sure um yeah i'll get into that i reckon for probably around
00:51:46
Speaker
60 quid you can get Suspension training straps or TRX or whatever brand you want. They will give you hundreds of variations of exercises The resistance bands for your ankles You can get bands as well that have handles on the end So it's a straight band with a handle on either end use that for your upper body work and
00:52:08
Speaker
Something like a Swiss ball will help with some of your squat work, quite a bit of your core training. I don't know whether you guys have promoted foam rollers in the past. It's a little bit do they work, don't they work, send them to ice baths. If they work for you, fantastic use them. There's a lot of tools out there. I know you've been and bought one of these muscle guns.
00:52:37
Speaker
I've not seen much research on them, but if they work for you, fantastic. Whatever makes training, recovery and your sporting lifestyle better or for it.
00:52:58
Speaker
Cool. I mean, so you can get most of those anywhere, can't you? I know you kind of, there's a company that you kind of get stuff from. We've got a company called Absolute Performance. They've been around for years now. So most of our sundry kit, not the big kind of squat racks and that sort of stuff, although they do do them, we buy a lot of our peripheral equipment from them.
00:53:23
Speaker
And I mentioned to, can I just say as well, I have no financial affiliation with these guys. I've just worked with them for a long time. They supply great kit, good prices, and they've actually phoned for the running for this group and the podcast, a 25% discount code up there, which I'm not going to tell you what it is now, but Matt can put that in the show notes if he wants.
00:53:45
Speaker
Well, no, it's just easy. So it's absolute performance. And if you want it, it's beef 25, isn't it? It's just easy. Yeah. It's a beef 25. But yeah, you're not, you're not, you're not on commission, are you? I get nothing from Simon Britain. He might buy me a coffee at the annual conference we go to, but that's about it. Okay. Well, I want a coffee as well then.
00:54:08
Speaker
Yeah, in the post. But no, so, and also you can get this kind of stuff. I mean, I was in, I can't remember if it was Lidler or Aldi the other week, you know, they have their fitness weeks, don't they? And they have some of this stuff in there. So you can always pick it up. They have their own TRX kind of suspension straps. And yeah, you can get it from anywhere, can't you? It's just about kind of just if you see it, pick it up when you see it, isn't it really? The market is swamped with it. There's so much choice out there.
00:54:37
Speaker
Brands tend to be better quality, but that all depends as well on whether you're going to use them on a daily basis, once a week, or this time of year, people ask for exercise equipment, bikes, cross trainers, and they end up being clothes hearers for the next three years in the bedroom.
00:54:56
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that's, you know, I was, I was saying at the end of the first lockdowns and I'm going to hold off to get a new turbo trainer because I thought, you know, that was going to say all these people have bought them. Um, and they're suddenly going to be selling them really cheap. I obviously it's going on a bit too long. So I don't think that's going to happen for a while. Yeah. The job of these years is that if you invest well, once you don't need to replace it for a long, long time.
Conclusion and Future Content
00:55:26
Speaker
So what's on the horizon for you? Oh blimey, good question. Well I've got this challenge to do with the athletes. Obviously with our students not having had a full first term of training this year at uni.
00:55:42
Speaker
we're hoping to get them back in in January and some from some start of some sort of pre-season again then get some competition in with them that's January for us January February March is normally the end of the league competition moving into knockouts etc which is exciting part of the year so this year is going to be slightly different because it's all being foreshortened personally just want to get
00:56:10
Speaker
It's that eternal challenge of staying fit, dropping some weight. Yeah, that half Ironman and Ironman thing keeps dangling out in front of me. And we've talked about doing it in different formats and doing different ways and it's something I still want to visit. Yeah, definitely. I don't feel I'm in the right place at the moment.
00:56:35
Speaker
I need to get myself, my head back in the right space as well as my fitness. But, you know, I enjoyed to, we had some lovely runs between the two lockdowns along the steep run together. That was really nice. Get back into that. I'd get back on part run and get the, um,
00:56:50
Speaker
get the bike out and do some more bike rides. Well on the swimming world we've had some down at, we've got a beach close to where I'm living now and Matt's been over a few times. I mean get down there and get the old wetsuits out and it's, it's stunning. Teenery is just, it's beautiful. Yeah we're very lucky we're over in water swimming. I say we're lucky but I think I really want a lake as well. I think sea swimming's great and I love it when I do lots of it.
00:57:17
Speaker
but it'd be nice on a lake near you. You can get up to, um, through him and get to the vobster and it's just a bit too far for me. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of lakes and red bars up in Dartmoor and that, but you just can't get access to them. No, cause they're, yeah, reservoirs, you're not swimming. No, but it's really tough, isn't it? Yeah. It's been a weird year, isn't it? It's been really weird year for that. I mean, I don't know. I think I had,
00:57:43
Speaker
four, five races cancelled or postponed and I couldn't then do the postponement dates and I think it's I can see trail races starting up again now because obviously that's a little bit easier yeah and I think because they can send them off in waves and they're smaller numbers and I think that triathlons are now putting in waves and triathlons started again before the second lockdown yeah I think actually anyway I think there's potentially more duathlons taking place because of the restrictions on pools and
00:58:10
Speaker
which it seems strange that you can go into a pub and get pissed but you can't, sorry, drunk, but you can't poof or swim. Yeah. Well we could spend all night talking about Covid and kind of the knock-on effects it's had and how unjust bits are but let's not start there.
00:58:29
Speaker
Well I think that's nearly an hour we've been chatting away and I only go and cook tea and I'm sure you go and go and do bath time or something like that. Hello, she went down at six o'clock so she'll be waking up at five o'clock in the morning. I don't mean to say that. I'm not in person so it's okay.
00:58:46
Speaker
Yeah, I don't miss those days at all. But yeah, I'm going to try and get out. I think that's the second of December today and I've done two runs. So I've done a run on the first and one the second. I think I'm not going to run tomorrow. I'm going to run on, I might, yeah, I'll run on Friday. So on the fourth.
00:59:04
Speaker
I'm going to try and, well, I might end up going somewhere. I spend all the weather. If it's nice weather, I get tempted because I'm not doing very much work at the moment. So it's quite, I get tempted to get, instead of sitting in front of the laptop or doing emails or whatever, I tend to try and get out and run. I'll send you a daily challenge through, mate.
00:59:20
Speaker
Okay, I might join the Daily Challenge, that'd be good fun. It's either that I've got to do a Mattax report return, so I'd rather do that, rather than a Mattax report return, so definitely. Well, thanks for joining me tonight, it's been a fantastic chat to you, and I will meet you for coffee when we're allowed to properly. We're saying that X Coffee's back open now, isn't it? So we should meet for coffee.
00:59:41
Speaker
Socially distant, of course. Socially distant, of course. Of course, always. But yeah, thank you very much. And I, you know, I'm hoping that people have taken on some of these bits. If you had any kind of last minute kind of, any kind of summation you want to say about kind of S&C, is there anything you'd like to finish off on? Give it a go. Give it a go. You're going to be, it'll be, it'll be a challenge.
01:00:06
Speaker
And if you stick with it for a period of time, you will feel a difference. And if that difference is mentally your freedom fitter and stronger, or your times over 5k, 10k, half, full marathon are faster, I'm not saying it's going to be the determining factor, but it can play a really positive part in improving performance.
01:00:36
Speaker
Matt and I can discuss this afterwards, but I'm quite happy to throw some ideas out with regards to some training programs, home programs, I can put that together for, and then if Matt, if you want to make them available, you're more than welcome.
01:00:49
Speaker
Yeah, it might be something we would look at doing on the website, actually, because we could put that on the UK Run Chat website quite easily. That might be something really good. Yeah, well, thank you for that. And also thanks for your time tonight. It's been really interesting. It's a similar kind of conversation we have on a regular basis, but it's something I felt would be worthwhile sharing. So I hope people found this interesting. Cool. And thank you for joining in.
01:01:12
Speaker
And I will see you very soon and I hope everyone's well and carrying on running and staying safe. And we will speak to you again on the next podcast. Merry Christmas.