The two camps in S&C: On the one side, it is about putting athletes through high volume/high intensity training so that they become more robust and better able to deal with high levels of stress. On the other side, it is about minimum effective dose, doing as little volume/intensity as possible while still making progress. Reading Triphasic Training put me in the first mindset. Reading 1×20 put me in the second mindset. What is correct? I think it depends on who you’re working with.
“Injury Prevention”. If we do ‘neuromuscular re-education‘ where athletes land with their knees out, decelerate with body control, etc. – why do we do it when they are fresh? More often, injuries happen when athletes are fatigued. It would make more sense to work on these things when they are tired.
Sprint Mechanics. How can we know what is correct for an individual if we don’t 1) Have timing gates to test them or 2) have the ability to show cause-and-effect with technique and injury? We act like we know what is right and wrong but have little objective proof… we are just speculating.
The body is a system of systems (Circulatory, digestive, endocrine, lymphatic, immune, muscular, nervous, respiratory, etc.). When we focus on one system (e.g. muscular), and its Stimulus-Recovery-Adaptation rates, what other systems are also affected that have shorter or longer SRA rates? Could our muscular-focused training cause compromised immunity, chronic nervous system fatigue, or digestion issues? Maybe we don’t focus on this because it’s too much to actually measure… we just do what has worked in the past and assume other systems will manage.
Sport agility. We have ideas about the optimal way to change direction, accelerate, and decelerate, but what if there is a defender attempting to stay in front of us? We might avoid optimal technique because it would be too easy for the defender to anticipate our next move. How often are optimal angles of force production/absorption seen when trying to get space for a step back three pointer or cut left on a defender who thinks we’re going right? What works best in a closed drill is probably not best when thrown into sport.
