Rob Anderson is an award-winning youth strength and conditioning coach with over 15 years of experience developing young athletes across schools, academies, and national governing bodies. He spent five years with Scottish Rugby as the Lead Strength & Conditioning Coach for the Under 16, 17 and 18 National Teams as well as coaching emerging youth talent at the Borders & East Lothian and Caledonia Regional Academies. Rob then founded The Athlete Academy with the mission to provide world-class athletic development and coaching for young athletes. His dedication to improving youth athletic development is reflected in his recognition as the 2024 UKSCA Strength & Conditioning Coach of the Year for Youth Sport. A leading voice in LTAD, Rob also mentors practitioners through Collaborate Sports, helping coaches implement best practices in clubs, schools, and private sectors.

QUOTES

“It's not uncommon for guys and girls to be growing seven to 12 centimeters in a year. That's a huge physiological change. It's not uncommon during peak weight velocity for guys to be stacking on 10 kilos in a year. That's a huge physiological change. So in some ways, the training programs that we are putting on adult athletes, we know there's a level of adaptation that's going to change physiologically but we're probably getting the greatest physiological change during that period of adolescence, both for male and female athletes, with training”.

“If it works with kids, it works with adults but not the other way around”

"And sometimes it's going to be a bit deceptive for youth athletes because you might think, well, actually we've not changed training load. Like they're doing exactly what they were doing last year. But actually, last year they weren't in their peak high velocity and now they are. And so maybe their sensitivity has increased and that workload that was previously okay is actually now too much. And we just need to be smart about how we decrease that"

“So we need enough calories for the usual resting metabolic rate plus growth. Then what fuelling do we need for athletic endeavors? You know, it tends to be a lot more than parents think in terms of what the requirement actually is. And that's why, you know, it's not uncommon for athletes to be tired and under fueled because they don't realize that how much their calorie requirements are going through that period of training and growing.”

“I actually really love martial arts for an LTAD environment, because I think it's actually way more organic. You go into a Jiu-Jitsu class, for example, it's not all the white belts in one room or the brown belts in another room or the blue. It's like combined different ages, different experience levels. And it's actually a really quality LTAD experience and I've kind of borrowed from that.”

SHOWNOTES

1) Rob’s progression in youth strength and conditioning, from his own experience to Scotland national youth rugby teams to opening Athlete Academy

2) Fundamentals of youth strength & conditioning and dispelling old youth training myths

3) The impact of peak height velocity on different growth related conditions like Osgood Schlatters

4) The difference between peak height velocity and peak weight velocity

5) Organizing training and adaptation aims (e.g., neural vs hypertrophy) around pre, circa, and post pre height velocity

6) The parent as the head of performance for the youth athlete

7) The intake process at the Athlete Academy and putting youth athletes into the right level of a curriculum

8) Micro-dosing different tests across different weeks

9) Addressing parent questions about what their kid needs and the value of unilateral work

PEOPLE MENTIONED

Avery Faigenbaum

Kelvin Giles

Dan Baker

Rhodri Lloyd

John Oliver

Shane Fitzgibbon

James Baker

Angela Jackson

Mike Boyle

Frans Bosch

Ivi is an expert in women's football and the founder of Casagrande Coaching, a UK based consultancy practice. A former professional player, Ivi has also worked as a performance coach with teams like Orlando Pride, Brighton & Hove Albion, Ireland Women’s Team, Brazil Women’s Team and US Youth National Teams. She now focuses on both early career and seasoned coaches via international coach education programmes, grassroots projects and progressive frameworks that create better environments for everyone to thrive. As such, Ivi delivers coach education for the Football Association of Ireland via a grassroots programme supporting young female football players, and with FIFA and UEFA as a Technical Expert delivering workshops for teams around the world. Since 2020 Ivi has also run her own Mentorship programmes to educate and empower coaches.

QUOTES

“So I think the best environments that I've been in, they have constant feedback loops between staff members and also players where they have debrief in forms of feedback surveys or a lot of conversations with players about what they need”

“if you're in an international team environment with camps, for example, at the end of each camp with Ireland, we would survey the players and it was very successful, we're going to do this debrief and we're going to see the trends”

"What are the non-negotiables for us as coaches, but also what are the things that we will allow the players to have more freedom, more creativity with and allow them to do different things in their training”

"I think on top of everything that we talked about in terms of creating an environment for players to thrive, we also have to create our own environment for ourselves to then thrive. Because if we're not creating that, we are not going to be able to have mental space to create that environment for the players”

SHOWNOTES

1) Ivi’s journey from professional soccer to coaching elite female football.

2) Zooming out to observe environments that are conducive for players and staff to thrive.

3) The importance of frequent feedback loops in high performance, including reflecting on every session you coach.

4) Observing athletes and their interactions in their daily environment.

5) How speaking the same shared language as coaches impacts high performance.

6) Creating autonomy in playing groups and the practical tools to use.

7) How to implement an education process with athletes to improve culture.

8) The importance of staff having boundaries with players and protecting their time.

PEOPLE MENTIONED

Dan Pfaff

Ben has over 20 years experience across elite sport having been involved in the physical preparation of athletes since 1999. His coaching experience extends across a wide range of sports both professional (AFL and cricket) and Olympic sports including leading the physical preparation for the Australian Beach Volleyball program for the 2013/15/19/21 World Championships and the Rio Olympics and Tokyo Olympics. He has also had extensive experience in coaching developing athletes having worked at ASPIRE Academy and in his current role as Head of Athletic Development at St Peter’s College in Adelaide, Australia.

He has completed a PhD examining the neuromuscular effects and adaptations to maximal strength and power training and is an ASCA Level 3 and Master Coach and in 2023 was awarded Life Membership to ASCA.

QUOTES

"What is really clear is the neuro side of the neuromuscular is tough. And for good reason… It's because for a long time, our understanding of the neural system and its impact on performance outcomes, because again, that's what's important for us and our athletes, has not really been well understood."

"One of the things that we're starting to discover is that your gaze where you are looking, what you're doing with your eyes is a really powerful tool to help prime, for lack of a better word, your extension movement pattern."

"The top one percent that are going on to win medals at Olympic Games versus those that are not, it's not so much the force that they can produce or the force at velocity via their agonist muscles but it's how well they can turn off their antagonists and cycle through multiple movements."

"I think what we probably initially started to blame CNS fatigue on was more acute type of fatigue, when probably the only people that start to show significant levels of neuromuscular fatigue from a neural perspective are those that have been chronically overtrained for a significant amount of time"

"What I found was that the sprint cyclists had much greater ability to damage themselves, to put themselves into even just a short term performance hole compared with rowers based on the type of training they were doing."

SHOWNOTES

1) Ben’s background and journey in strength and conditioning

2) Understanding the neural side of neuromuscular training

3) Opportunities in training and practical methods to enhance the neural response to training

4) The priming effect of gaze on different movement patterns and the role of coordination in peformance

5) Periodizing methods to enhance neural responses in strength & conditioning sessions

6) Neuromuscular assessments and Ben’s thoughts on neural fatigue

7) The use of electrical muscle stimulation in training and the time course of recovery from high neural load activity based on level of athlete

8) Reframing strength as a skill and countermovement jump numbers in beach volleyball

PEOPLE MENTIONED

Cal Dietz

Dry Land to Poolside: Developing Youth Athletes at Brisbane Grammar

This episode of the ASCA High School and Youth Podcast, hosted by Sophie Pidcock and featuring guest Lara Ponsi from Brisbane Grammar School (BGS), explores the design and implementation of a long-term athletic development framework for swimmers. Lara shares how she built the BGS swim strength and conditioning program from scratch after taking on the role in 2022. The conversation covers the journey from initial challenges to establishing a structured six-squad framework that integrates dry land and gym-based training with swimming development. The discussion emphasises athlete education, general athletic development for youth, long-term progression and collaboration with swimming coaches. They also highlight practical examples like games-based training for younger athletes, gymnastics integration and the creation of a games library. The episode concludes with reflections on athlete progression, enjoyment and the importance of preparing well-rounded, confident athletes both in and out of the pool.

Highlights

Background & Context

• Lara Poncey started in 2022, taking responsibility for over 200 swimmers (ages 7–26).

• Initially, there was no clear training structure or framework across squads.

Framework Development

• Created a six-squad progression model aligned with both athletic development and swimming performance.

• Focus on long-term athlete development rather than short-term results.

• Designed to educate athletes about the “why” behind training and build confidence in the gym.

Early Stages (Micro & Junior Squads, ages 7–12)

• Goal: Build fundamental movement skills and coordination.

• Approach: Games-based, fun, low-structure “organized chaos.”

• Sessions emphasize play, agility, body control, and enjoyment.

State Development Squad (12+)

• Introduction to foundational movement patterns (squat, hinge, push, pull).

• Low load, bodyweight-based, circuit-style sessions.

National Development Squad (14–15 yrs)

• First stage in the gym setting.

• Focus on building a broad athletic base and exposure to multiple training qualities (strength, power, endurance).

• Not heavily swimming-specific; prepares athletes for any sporting pathway.

National Performance Squads (15–18 yrs)

• Increased specificity and intensity, aligned with competition schedules.

• Differentiation between age squad (strength/power development with support and guidance) and open squad (advanced training, stroke-specific focus, collaboration with head coach).

Gymnastics Integration

• Weekly sessions in the gymnastics hall focusing on handstands, rings, dynamic balance, and body control.

• Strong correlation to swimming starts, turns, and streamline positions.

• Adds variety, enjoyment, and body awareness.

Programming Philosophy

• Tailored to athlete age, development, and competition demands.

• For younger squads: term-based training with holiday breaks to avoid burnout.

• For older squads: programming coordinated with key competitions (nationals, trials).

Games Library

• Lara developed a categorized library of games (activation, invasion, core, ball, etc.).

• Provides variety, ensures coverage of different movement skills, and keeps sessions engaging.

• Mix of researched, shared, and self-created games.

Key Takeaways

• Importance of education and enjoyment at all levels.

• Building confident, resilient athletes regardless of whether they continue with swimming.

• Framework ensures progression, structure, and long-term benefits.

• Positive cultural shift: swimmers now look forward to dry land training.

Dr. Gregory Haff is the Professor of S&C and the Director of the Strength and Power Research Group at ECU. He is the author of the ‘Scientific Foundations and Practical Applications of Periodisation’ & the co-editor of the NSCA’s Essentials of S&C textbooks. A central goal of his research is to bridge the gap between scientific inquiry & practical applications, with a research focus on the periodisation of training, resistance training programming strategies, and methods of testing and monitoring of the training process. His research focuses on methodologies for testing, monitoring, and programming resistance training interventions, as well as concepts related to periodization and training theory.

QUOTES

"So they created linear position transducers, much like a gym aware, and they used it with weightlifters in particular, because obviously weightlifting, it has a speed component to it e.g., you've got to be able to move the barbell quickly and you've got to be able to move heavy loads very quickly."

"If we guided training solely by velocity, we couldn't get high end strength development. Could we improve power? Yes. Could we improve the speed of movement? Yes. Could we regulate training load? Yes. But we often missed that stimulus to actually increase maximal strength."

"So when we looked at our data, what we found is the slope of the load velocity profile changes from day to day with fatigue more dramatically than maximal strength capacity. So this is where it gets a little interesting. If I'm programming off the load velocity profile, am I actually programming off the maximal capacity or am I being hyper reactive to fatigue?"

"Velocity based training is no better than the percentage based. There's no more variability or less variability. They're about the same. So is it really adding to my training other than more expense because I've got to buy them, more technology because I need it, and more training for my staff? Potentially not."

"You might want to occasionally use a load-velocity profile to look at where the athlete's weaknesses are. It might inform you, but then you've got to contextualize it. Where am I in my training program? And what is my goal right now? So if I'm in a strength power phase and the velocity end is low, then I have got a problem. But if I'm in a hypertrophy phase and it's low… you know, I don't really care right now."

"I wouldn't use it with weightlifting exercises, especially when what I've what I found with people that use it with weightlifting exercises, they change their technique to chase speed. And what happens is they create an inefficient movement pattern."

SHOWNOTES

1) Greg’s story, from growing up in the US as a son of a Marine to becoming a leading researcher in strength science

2) The history of velocity-based training and its German / Russian origins

3) Why we might have to be careful using VBT to estimate maximal strength considering the stability of maximal strength

4) Greg’s suggested strategies around using VBT to autoregulate load plus his preference for linear position transducers over accelerometers

5) Strength stability across different exercises and the stages of over-reaching/over-training

6) How and when to apply VBT during strength training periodization and using load-velocity profiles / critical minimum velocity thresholds across different exercises

7) The cognitive load of always using VBT and its effect on motivation as well as the effect of different athlete phenotypes on VBT

8) Which exercises to use VBT with and potential applications for other populations besides athletes

9) Using VBT to monitor readiness with a set load

10) The biggest thing Greg has changed his mind on in recent times and the importance of mobility

PEOPLE MENTIONED

Mike Stone

Boyd Epley

Andrew Fry

William Kraemer

Carl Miller

Stuart Guppy

Dietmar Schmidbleiter

Nick Poulos

Dan Baker

Jonathon Weakley

Bryan Mann

Duncan French

Youth and High School Strength and Conditioning

Andrew Lulham has been involved with elite sport for over 20 years working across multiple Olympic sports as a senior strength and conditioning coach for the Queensland Academy of Sport as well as working in professional football codes in Rugby (Wallabies and Western Force), AFL (Port Adelaide F.C.) and Rugby League (Brisbane Broncos). He is currently the Head of Athletic Performance for Ormiston College. Andrew is a Master L3 ASCA Strength and Conditioning Coach, Level 4 IAAF Level Sprints, Relays, Hurdles Coach and an IAAF Level 3 Jumps Coach and IAAF Level 3 Middle Distance Coach. During his time at the Queensland Academy of Sport, Andrew was also involved in the QAS Athletics program working as a Jumps coach from 2016-2021.

QUOTES

“What I want at training is I want them to think about what they're doing and get it precise. But then when I want them to race, when I want them to compete, I don't want them to think.”

“The eccentric strength stuff in our training for jumps or for sprinting is key. You know, like we have got to think about that we want them to produce as much as much force as they possibly can eccentrically”

“I could say they only do 90 seconds of hard work in a typical session. Like the session is actually not that hard overall, but the intensity has got to be so high when they do it and spot on and it's crazy in a sense when you're think of it like that they come do 90 seconds of work for around 90 minutes of training”

SHOWNOTES

1) Andrew’s background in strength and conditioning, transition to an athletics coach and then the high school setting

2) Identifying technical issues in athletes sprint biomechanics and developing a coaches eye

3) Frontside and backside mechanics in sprinting, watching the sole of the foot and a Trae Williams case study

4) Wickets, skipping ropes and high knee runs

5) How Andrew sets up a typical training session for his athletes

6) Eccentric single leg strength and the optimal knee angles to work at

7) What Andrew would take back to football codes from athletics and a willingness to try new things as a coach

PEOPLE MENTIONED

Ian King

Dan Baker

Kelvin Giles

Gary Bourne

Ralph Mann

Patrick Castelli

Damien Harper

Creating a Bespoke Athlete Monitoring System in Schools – A Conversation with Jackson Stone.

In this insightful episode of the ASCA High School & Youth Podcast, Jackson Stone shares how he built a custom student-athlete monitoring system tailored specifically to the school environment at Toowoomba Grammar. Moving beyond off-the-shelf athlete tracking solutions, Jackson details how he collaborated with school leadership and IT to create an integrated tool that captures training loads, well-being, academic performance and injury data—all while aligning with the school’s values and platforms. He provides a behind-the-scenes look at data privacy challenges, strategies to boost student compliance and how the system is used to inform interventions across sport, academics and student welfare. Whether you're a school-based S&C coach, teacher or administrator, this episode offers a blueprint for supporting holistic student-athlete development.

Christian Bosse has over 20 years of experience in coaching athletes at the elite level, working with more than 20 Olympians, 13 Olympic medallists, 7 Olympic champions, and 23 World champions. More recently, Christian has worked as a Strength & Conditioning Coach for the German Cycling Federation, where he is responsible for the S&C support of the national track cycling team. Christian also educates and mentors the coaches of the German Cycling Federation to improve the strength and conditioning support in the regional training centres.

Prior to this, Christian has worked for different national and international governing bodies, including the National Olympic Committee of the Netherlands, Catalan Tennis Federation, the British Lawn Tennis Association, the International Tennis Federation, the Chinese Olympic Committee.

QUOTES

“I just looked at what can I build in the entrepreneurial space. They call it the minimum viable product, meaning a product that works. It doesn't have all the features that you need in the end, but it works and it should be at a minimal cost.”

“So I don't necessarily ask them to send in a video of every exercise they do. It's more like, okay, you have to improve whatever your turnover in the clean, you have to improve your posture in the squat or something like this. So then that person sends me the video regarding their points of improvement and the corrective exercises I've prescribed”

“I'm a big fan of limited amount of exercise selection, meaning one of my core philosophies as an S&C coach and that's probably opposed to many others, is just have a handful of exercises that you can dominate very, very well, and then do them as good as you can.”

“The innovation is not, yes, somewhere in the world we already know this. But over here, you don't do it. So the innovation is, in a way, we bring what we already know to that place where it's needed.”

“My point is is it correlation or causation that makes the cyclists legs big? I think it's more because of the stuff they do on the bike and… it's unlikely the work in the gym, it's more likely the work on the bike that leads to the big legs. So anyway that was definitely a challenge to get them away from, or to implement the thought of maybe we don't need that much of hypertrophy work for the legs”

SHOWNOTES

1) Christian’s journey in strength and conditioning including stops in India, Spain, China, Netherlands, and Germany across tennis and cycling

2) How limited resources drove innovation in supporting the German national cycling team

3) The use of video feedback across a decentralized team model and the advantages of being able to stockpile and tag videos from athletes over time

4) Technical coach strength and conditioning education and making sure old knowledge is being applied in the right places

5) Differences between German and Dutch athlete preparation in cycling

6) Christian’s long term athlete development approach through reverse engineering performance and rates of progression over developmental years for younger athletes

7) Adapting to the demands of working with athletes remotely in different sports

8) What a typical session looks like for strength and power development with German cyclists

9) Staying away from right or wrong when working with coaches and athletes and Twan Van Gendt’s Bulgarian split squats

People Mentioned

Dietmar Schmidtbleicher

Katharina Dunst

Narelle Sibte

Reid Hoffman

Twan Van Gendt

In this episode, host Andrew is joined by Nathan Heaney, an accomplished strength and conditioning coach, lecturer, and founder of The Conditioning Consultant. With over 12 years of experience across the Victorian Institute of Sport, AFL Victoria, Adelaide Crows, and Xavier College, Nathan shares a rich perspective on designing and implementing effective conditioning programs across both elite and high school environments. The conversation dives into the common misconceptions around aerobic training, the cultural and structural challenges in youth athletic development, and the importance of data-driven, age-appropriate approaches to physical preparation.

Nathan offers practical advice on building conditioning plans, navigating sport-specific demands, balancing participation and performance, and communicating with stakeholders—from students to parents to old-school coaches. Whether you're new to high school S&C or a seasoned practitioner, this episode delivers deep insights into conditioning across developmental stages.