Dylan Hicks is a PhD candidate in Exercise Science at Flinders University, Adelaide. He is currently completing his thesis focused on Force-Velocity Profiling and has undertaken research with the Seacliff Hockey Club and the Adelaide United W-League team. Dylan is also the Head of Physical Education and High-Performance Academy Coordinator at Cardijn College in Adelaide. He is a Level II ASCA coach, a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist (NSCA) and has completed a MSc at Edith Cowan University (Strength & Conditioning). His area of specialty is coaching speed and making sense of the data to improve sprint performance. Dylan has previously worked with athletes in team sports in the AFL, SANFL, A-League and NBL.

QUOTES

“Should I just invest my time in improving maximal force or should I also focus on improving maximal speed?”

“We know that we want the athletes to produce 9N/kg and 10-10.5m/s”

“Do not put all your eggs in one bucket with force-velocity profiling”

“My inkling with the training group (in my research) was that the group that was doing vertical loaded strength training was going to improve jump and sprint than the group doing horizontal based exercises”

“The biggest thing I have learned is not to put too much into the pot and strip things back into a really lean training program”

SHOWNOTES

1) Dylan’s time in education, research and strength and conditioning

2) Optimization of sprint performance and assessing an athlete’s force-velocity profile in a sprint

3) A quadrant based approach to bucket athletes based on their sprint force-velocity profile

4) Practical sessions based on an athletes’ force-velocity profile

5) Technical analysis and ratio of forces in acceleration

6) Putting vertical (e.g. jumping) and horizontal (e.g. sprinting) force-velocity profiles together

7) The changes in Dylan’s coaching practice from before starting his PhD to now and what he has found in his research

8) Using a Bondarchuk model and keeping training programs relatively constant

PEOPLE MENTIONED

Darren Burgess

Mladen Javonic

Clair Drummond

Jace Delaney

JB Morin

James Wild

Dan Cleather

Kym Williams

Derek Everly

Antoly Bondarchuk

Ashley Jones

Nathan Parnham