What a summer of sport it has been for Britain. The British & Irish Lions winning the Test series against Australia opened the flood gates for a torrent of success with Andy Murray winning Wimbledon the next day, Chris Froome winning the Tour de France and England Cricket opening a commanding 2-0 lead in the Ashes. These achievements are what Dr Paul Ford has called the tip of the iceberg of the journey that has led the athletes to their pinnacle achievements in an interesting blog.
There has been a glut of articles looking at the coaching, science and stories behind these wins which have made for a bumper crop of reading. Below are the articles I have found interesting. Don’t forget that if you have written or know of similar content that would be good for future posts then please let me know via simon@undergroundathletics.co.uk or on Twitter @SiNainby.
Special mention this month goes to this interview that Sprints Coach Stuart McMillan did with the American Track Athlete Lauryn Williams on his excellent blog. Lauryn is an interesting case at the moment as she refuses to take any type of supplement. Given the failed drug tests of several elite athletes which have been attributed to supplements it is clear why she has adopted this approach. Stuart outlined exactly why and how supplements can become a problem in this excellent summary of progression from school to supplements (click to enlarge):
General Coaching
- What separates amateurs from masters?
- Manchester United’s Flair Factory
- Phil Neville’s journey into coaching – an interesting story in here on how players view coaching awards
- Planning is more than just “Balls, Bibs & Cones”
- The importance of integrity in coaching
- Hey Parents – Your kid sucks
- Replacing Sir Alex Ferguson – what lessons can be learned for coaches?
- Just a dumb coach
- Greatest Vince Lombardi quotes
- Youth football special on talkSport
- International Physical Literacy Conference presentations & handouts
- Yulunga – traditional indigenous games from Australia
- Futsal key to Fulham’s flourishing fledglings
- Nine for IX short video: Coach
- The state of the game in Football Academies
- Bursting the specialisation myth
- Ruff guide to talent development
- The mad growth of golf in China
- The gift of doubt
- The FA, Coaching & Youth Football – includes a very interesting interview on problems with the coach education system
- The thinking coach – science and research is encroaching into more areas of AFL
Sport Science
- Erik Korem – The new era of high performance
- Fatigue and team performance in football
- Beware the Big Errors of “Big Data”
- Trust in science would be improved by study pre-registration
- All Blacks keep it simple with training methods
- Injury risk of size mismatches in youth rugby
- Tennis coaches see advantages of video analysis
- McClaren & GSK Sport Scientists Google Hangout
- A comprehensive analysis of senior men’s professional inury studies in Rugby Union
- Interview with Bradford City’s Head of Sport Performance
- Predicting athletic injuries – the final frontier in sports analytics
- Informed Sport – Supplement testing
- Catapult GPS – Munster Rugby
- For the Lions, GPS plays important role in preventing injury as well as player rehab
- Quantifying how hard impacts are in Rugby Union
- Smiles are for losers: MMA fighters who smile before a fight are more likley to lose
- Data is worthless if you don’t communicate it
- Why data needs stories
- B&I Lions Test Match week – busy doing nothing but thinking about the Test
- Interview with Fergus Connolly
- Monitoring the performance development of players
- Free full text articles on Football from the Journal of Human Kinetics
- Statistics and Magnetic socks shape modern Tae Kwan Do
- Sounders FC Sports Science Weekend recap
- Another Sounders FC weekend overview – and notes from the weekend Part I
- Interview with Natalia Verkhoshansky
- Natalia Verkhoshansky on Depth Jumps vs Drop Jumps
- Dr Liam Hennessy – embracing sports science every step of the way
- Evaluating performance in professional sport
- Special investigation of drugs and bribery in Russian sport
- Andy Murray’s appliance of science
- The Price of Gold documentary on Swedish Athletes
- Strength training for sprinting
- Where do muscles get their power? 50 year old assumptions about strength muscled aside
- Inside Chris Froome’s training
- Team Sky releases Chris Froome’s data in a bid to combat doping claims
- The fastest man in Rugby – documentary on Carlin Isles
- Built to perform – why body type matters
- How much of top level sport is clean?
- Doping in sport – the Athlete’s dilemma
- Franks brothers go the extra mile
Skill Acquisition
- Practice must resemble the game
- RFU Professional Coach Development Manager on coaching & skill acquisition
- Critiques of Talent Development
- Johan Cruyff’s impact on FC Barcelona
- Experiencing the Player Centred Approach
- The role of discovery learning
- Game sense coaching in Rugby League
- The non-linear nature of learning – a differential learning approach
- The correlation of differential learning and the stage of cognitive development in football through a game of 3 v 1
- Prof. Schollhorn – Differential learning
- Decision making in Futsal
- What young athletes need beside 10,000 hours of practice
- Implicit learning
- Anticipation skill in sport
- Assessment – Coaching’s invisible ingredient
- Play your best Basketball podcast
- Impact of perception on action in team sports
- Work as play
- The journey to Mastery
- The 10,000 hour question – how long does it take to learn a skill?
