My strength and conditioning placement is going well and is honestly so interesting. There has been a lot of early morning starts especially when coaching the high performance golf team at 6:45am. Coaching the golf team for their strength and conditioning sessions has been very interesting not just when delivering the sessions but also programming for them. It has been interesting looking into what exercises are going to help with the rotation of the torso to help with the twist when they swing the golf club.
I also got to sit in on a technical coach meeting for all the high performance swim athletes. This was quite interesting as I got to listen in and see how to plan for athletes that are going to be going to compete to qualify for the 2020 Olympic games in Tokyo, this involved discussing what type of training they would be doing in strength and conditioning as well as swimming and general fitness in the months and weeks upcoming to the qualifiers.
I have also been getting the chance to train myself during my work placement. There has been gaps during the day for us as coaches to go and use the gym. I feel this is very important as a coach as it is important to practice what you preach and develop yourself as a coach. I also believe exercise should be incorporated into every job as it is a good way to de stress if you are having a bad day as well as obviously keeping active.
Throughout the rest of this day we coached tennis, high performance swim and had a one to one session with a member of staff from the university who has been having some problems with his running. Avery keen and experienced runner this person was experiencing pains and niggles when running. This member of staff was having problems with his feet so therefore had been seeing a professional who had been helping him with insoles for his shoes, this person also wrote the member of staff a gym programme. He was getting bored of the gym programme and wanted something new and fresh so came to Josh for a new one. We sat down together and spoke through the problems and discussed new exercises to help with things such as the persons balance, mobilisation and just to strengthen the muscles etc.
Excited for next time.
Sounds really interesting working with different types of athletes!
Ross