Gareth Webber is a Strength and Conditioning Coach from Cardiff in the U.K. He has a BSc in Sport & Exercise Science and MSc in Exercise Physiology from Loughborough University and is a ASCA level 3 PCAS Elite coach. He has been involved in high-performance, professional sport for over thirteen years and has worked in three national institutes and two professional team environments across ten sports in five countries. His areas of specialty are the concurrent training of multiple physical qualities to maximize athlete preparedness for competition and the return to play process. He has presented at both ASCA and ICST conferences and has guest lectured at universities in the U.K., Asia and Australia.

QUOTES

“Sometimes basic scientific theory, training principles and exercise technique does the world of good even in world class athletes.”

“It is a similar concept of stripping things back to a) protect athletes and b) to get some robustness into them so they could spend more time on the technical and tactical training”

“Athletes and coaches respond really well to competence and confidence in strength & conditioning coaches when first starting”

“With injured players, I try and keep the training process similar to what they would be doing if they weren’t injured… just working around the injury”

“I use a Gymaware as an extra level of data and an extra level of protection where I don’t need to go super super heavy with their lifting”

SHOWNOTES

1) Gareth’s backstory and experience across multiple sports from rugby union to ten pin bowling

2) The advantages of being a generalist in strength & conditioning

3) Cornerstones of strength & conditioning that coaches should be competent in before trying to expand into other specialty areas

4) Examples of reverse engineering robustness across different sports

5) The softly-softly approach strength & conditioning coaches can use when first starting in a new position.

6) Different heuristics and non-negotiables for strength & conditioning from Gareth’s experience

7) A typical week outline in current role as return to play process for Cardiff Blues

8) Guidelines for bringing players back into full training from injury and examples of low-cost return to play criteria