Pacey Performance Podcast

This week's episode of the Pacey Performance Podcast sees Rob speaking to Micheál Cahill. Micheál has been in the US for a number of years while completing his PhD and working at Athlete Training and Health in Texas. Most practitioners will know him for his work in resisted speed training with youth populations which is the exact topic of today's discussion.

In the first half of the discussion, Micheál outlines his philosophy when working with youth athletes and outlines the gaps in maturation and develop where we can really focus on speed development. He also outlines why you may use sled pushes versus sled pulls with youth athletes.

In the second half of the conversation we focus solely on resisted sprint trainnig for all populations. How can we prescribe load and how can we understand what an athletes needs from resisted sprints?

Finally Micheál tackles some of the misconceptions and common questions that come up around resisted sprints.

If you want a deep dive into resisted sprints and getting youth players fast, this one is for you.

Main talking points -

• Developing speed across the age groups

Marco featured on episode #413 of the Pacey Performance Podcast. This #bitesize episode takes a great clip from that episode where he discussed -

• The importance of HRV data collection timing

Check out the full episode with Marco here - https://www.sportsmith.co/listen/heart-rate-variability-what-we-know-and-how-it-can-be-used-to-inform-training-prescription/

This episode is supported by RockDaisy, the only FREE AMS on the market. AMS Lite features reporting capabilities, questionnaires and forms, alerts and communication, data sharing, data visualisation and calendar views.

This week's guest on the Pacey Performance Podcast speaking to Rob is Stephen Patterson. It's actually Stephen's second time on the podcats having featured 3 years ago talking about the same topic, blood flow restriction training (BFR).

Blood flow restriction training, although being around for years and years has seen an explosion in interest of the last few years. More devices on the market, an up surge in research and Stephen's podcast has all led to this boom. As interest rises and practitioners get their hands on the wearables or garments used for blood flow restriction training, new applications are spoken about. Because of this, it was essential to get Stephen back on to discuss some of those new applications and see what research (anecdotal or peer-reviewed) is behind them.

In the first part of the episode we discuss BFR's more traditional applications; strength training, hypertrophy and rehab. The second part sees us discussing some of the more novel applications of this training modality; recovery and pre-training/match potentiation.

If you're interested to know more about BFR and its applications, this podcast is for you.

Main talking points -

• Physiology behind BFR

Nathan featured on episode #420 of the Pacey Performance Podcast. This #bitesize episode takes a great clip from that episode where he discussed -

• What MAS is and isn't

Check out the full episode with Nathan here - https://www.sportsmith.co/listen/maximal-aerobic-speed-vs-tempo-which-is-optimal-for-team-sport-aerobic-fitness/

This episode is supported by RockDaisy, the only FREE AMS on the market. AMS Lite features reporting capabilities, questionnaires and forms, alerts and communication, data sharing, data visualisation and calendar views.

This week on the Pacey Performance Podcast, Rob is speaking to Senior Director of Performance Science at the Kansas City Royals, Austin Driggers.

Although often flying under the radar, Austin is highly respected in the field having come up through the US Olympic Committee system working with winter sport athletes under the tutelage of Brad DeWeese.

This episode kicks off with Austin explaining how the Royals have developed a system which assesses each player throughout the year to understand their strengths and weaknesses. This then helps him and the rest of the team design programmes to keep each athlete fit and competing across the gruelling 180+ game season.

We also chat about how he has tapped into and learnt from other environments such as business. This is a fascinating part of the episode as sport can often seem in a bubble with people looking in but not much going the other way.

If you're aim is to reduce injuries with your athletes, check out this episode with Austin and press play on your chose podcast player.

Main talking points -

• What assessments Austin uses

This week's Pacey Performance Podcast sees Rob speaking to Senior Strength and Conditioning Coach at New South Wales Institute of Sport, Nathan Spencer. So what has Nathan got to do with NBA players? Well, prior to moving back to Australia,  Nathan spent 4 years at the Orlando Magic, firstly as a Performance and Rehab Coach before progressing to Head Strength Coach.

In this episode, Nathan reflects on his time in the NBA, opening up about a difficult transition from Australian pro basketball. He dives into his preconceptions about NBA players and what they should and shouldn't be doing before detailing the assessments that formed the foundation of their programme. We discuss assessments that came and went during his 4 years in Orlando as well as the metrics that become valuable to him and the rest of the performance team.

We finish off the conversation by getting into the detail about how NBA players train on the road, how they maintain such high physical capacity whilst in the midst of a packed schedule.

If you want to know how to develop an NBA player, click play on this episode with Nathan.

Main talking points - 

• Reflections on Nathan's time in the NBA - the realities

• What physical characteristics do athletes need to possess to play in the NBA and YOUR way of playing?

Johann featured on episode #415 of the Pacey Performance Podcast. This #bitesize episode takes a great clip from that episode where he discussed -

• How to maximise impact with data

Check out the full episode with Johann here - https://www.sportsmith.co/listen/data-science-data-visualisation-and-evaluating-the-effectiveness-of-a-programme/

This episode is supported by RockDaisy, the only FREE AMS on the market. AMS Lite features reporting capabilities, questionnaires and forms, alerts and communication, data sharing, data visualisation and calendar views.

This week on the Pacey Performance Podcast, Rob is speaking to Head Strength and Conditioning Coach at Florida Atlantic University (FAU), Joey Guarascio. Joey has previously held positions at Colorado State, and Ole Miss before landing at FAU in 2020.

Deceleration testing and training is getting more and more attention both in research and in practice, and rightly so. Joey has recently written about his thoughts on deceleration and its this topic Rob chats with him about in this episode. We kick our discussion on how he integrates some of Damian Harper's deceleration assessments into his larger battery of tests at FAU. Joey emphasises the need for specific deceleration assessment versus thinking that a change of direction test will tell us what we need to know.

We then chat about building the qualities needed to improve deceleration ability, firstly in the weightroom and then out on the field. Joey explains how he uses eccentric training at various different levels to build the engine and then the drill he uses on the field to refine technique.

If you're looking to include deceleration assessments into your testing battery or want an insight into what exercises translate to improved deceleration ability on the field, give this a listen.

Main talking points - 

• Why deceleration so important

Håkan featured on episode #272 of the Pacey Performance Podcast. This #bitesize episode takes a great clip from that episode where he discussed -

• How to programme the load used in resisted sprint training?

Check out the full episode with Håkan here - https://www.sportsmith.co/listen/pacey-performance-podcast-272-hakan-andersson/

This episode is supported by RockDaisy, the only FREE AMS on the market. AMS Lite features reporting capabilities, questionnaires and forms, alerts and communication, data sharing, data visualisation and calendar views.

This week on the Pacey Performance Podcast, Rob is speaking to Dr. Shaun McLaren about all things RPEs and subjective measures.

RPE is no doubt the most used tool for coaches to understand an athlete's response to training. But just asking an athlete for a number to rate how hard a session was has lots of moving parts. When do you ask them? How do you ask them? Do you provide the scale on paper so they can see it? What scale are you using? Is the scale valid? How these questions are answered can have significant impact on the quality of data we get. And we all want to maximise data quality and not waste our or our athlete's time.

In this episode, Shaun gives some great recommendations how we can make the "right" decisions when setting up a system to collect RPEs and other subjective measures. But before he does that, Shaun gives us a great overview of why he thinks RPEs are so valuable and the science behind their being. The type of scale used has sparked a number of Twitter debates about the type of scale that is used. So we dive into that black hole and Shaun explains why using a valid scale is so important and some of the downfalls coaches make when using non-validated options.

If you want to maximise the RPE and subjective data that you are collecting, press play on the episode with Shaun on your chosen podcast player.

Main topics -

• What does this data really tell us? Effort, fatigue etc?