Today, we're diving into the world of youth athletic development with Brad Lawton, a passionate strength and conditioning coach with a rich background in exercise science. Starting his career as a personal trainer, Brad discovered his love for strength and conditioning, working with various clubs such as Bond University, Griffith Rugby Sevens, and the West Wales Raiders in Wales. He pursued further education with a master’s degree in strength and conditioning, which propelled him into a full-time career focused on youth athletic development. Currently, Brad extensive experience sees him working as a strength and conditioning coach to many youth athletes. Join us as Brad shares his journey, insights, and the innovative approaches he employs to enhance youth training programs. Highlights: Career Beginnings and Development. Educational Background. Experience with Youth Athletic Development. Current Role and Responsibilities. Program Structure and Philosophy. Challenges and Solutions. Importance of Facility Rules and Expectations. Engaging Students. Special Programs and Achievements. Advice for Aspiring Coaches. Learn More about our Official Equipment, Flooring and Podcast Partner AlphaFit: https://www.alphafit.com.au/asca

Shane Lehane currently works as Athletic Performance Coach for the Sydney Swans Football Club in the AFL. Prior to this Shane worked in professional Rugby Union for 12 years in both Europe and Australia with Leicester Tigers, Melbourne Rebels, and the Wallabies. Shane graduated from Loughbough University in Sport & Exercise Science and is currently a PhD candidate at La Trobe University, Melbourne. Shane’s studies are focused on Decision Making and the application of Systems Thinking for Strength & Conditioning Practitioners in the Team sport setting. Shane is also an accredited Elite Level 3 Coach with the ASCA. QUOTES “I definitely caused more problems than I solved by taking the performance model from Leicester straight to the Rebels” “Rather than being solely a S&C coach tasked with manipulating physical variables, I see our role as being an assistant coach with job of managing the physical dimension within context of team environment” “What differentiates practitioners is the understanding of the context of the environment they are working in” “It is ok to embrace something that is less objectifiable and be comfortable in the fact that this physical quality will transfer across to the sport” “Coordinative exercises and drills are a bridge between traditional strength training and a technical aspect of the sport” SHOWNOTES 1) Shane’s non-traditional start to a S&C career in the football codes 2) The role of the S&C coach in modern team sport setting and “well-intentioned reductionism” 3) Optimizing versus maximizing physical qualities in team sport athletes and how that fits with tactical and technical aspects of the game 4) The factors that positively and negatively impact team sport performance from a S&C perspective and the point of diminishing returns on physical traits 5) The balance between subjective and objective information with coaching vision and feedback for different players 6) Reflective practice, its role in other health sciences and importance for S&C coaches 7) Coordinative exercises and drills, dynamic correspondence, transfer and Frans Bosch 8) The different characteristics between rugby union vs AFL athletes and systems thinking PEOPLE MENTIONED Bryce Kavanagh John Pyror Lachlan James Fergus Connolly Russell Ackoff Dan Howells

In this episode of the ASCA High School and Youth Podcast, the journey of professional surfer Sophie McCulloch is highlighted, showcasing her triumph in the 2022 Challenger Series and subsequent injury setback, which she overcame to return to the World Surf League in 2024. The episode features an in-depth interview with her coach, Kerry Keightley, a renowned ASCA Accredited strength and conditioning expert, who shares his long-term athlete development strategies, emphasising individual needs analysis, evidence-based training, injury prevention, and holistic approaches like breathwork. Kerry also discusses the importance of building empathetic, respectful relationships with adolescent athletes, fostering their emotional and cognitive development alongside physical training, and the value of patience and community in coaching.

Simon Harries is an accomplished performance coach, holding a PhD in Human Physiology from The University of Newcastle and accredited as an ASCA Elite L3 S&C coach. He currently serves as the Head of Strength & Conditioning at the NSW Institute of Sport, where he leads a team of Strength & Conditioning coaches to develop and deliver world-class performance support to Olympic sport athletes. With over 15 years’ experience in high performance sport across strength & conditioning, rehabilitation and sports science positions, Simon has coached elite athletes and teams across multiple sports, including AFL, Rugby League, Rugby Union, Rugby Sevens, Water polo, and a range of individual event sports. QUOTES “Depending on your context, different rehabilitation models will suit and be more applicable than one or another” “The roles in rehab are dependent on the people in each discipline, not necessarily what disciplines are involved” “The main friction point in any working relationship is who is prescribing, who is coaching it and who makes the changes if they need to be made so to establish that at the onset helps a lot.” “Rehab drivers are often the unsaid reasons why certain decision are made in rehab” “Obviously when people talk about week-to-week change and acute to chronic ratios, that almost goes out the window in early parts of rehab otherwise the athlete would come back in 3 years’ time.” SHOWNOTES 1) How Simon’s career has progressed from PE teaching to the head of S&C at NSWIS 2) The emerging role of a rehabilitation strength & conditioning coach 3) Using the RACI model (responsible, accountable, consulted, informed) to get all staff involved in a rehabilitation of an athlete on the same page 4) Examples of KPIs across different stages in rehabilitation 5) The four rehab drivers: load, performance, medical and logistics 6) End-stage rehab KPIs and volume benchmarks for running based field sports 7) Shared decision making and communication with coaches 8) Different rehab models and their suitability in different environments 9) The importance of biomechanics for S&C coaches PEOPLE MENTIONED Tim Rogers Dan Cleather

Dan is an Accredited Strength & Conditioning Coach with the UKSCA. His experiences spans Professional, Olympic and Paralympic sports in both the UK and the USA, working in sports such as Rugby Union, Rugby 7s, and Major League Baseball. His work with the Team GB Rugby 7s teams took him to Rio in 2016 where the team placed Silver, and Tokyo in 2021 where the team placed 4th. Between these Olympics, he worked for the Houston Astros where he was part of the staff that went on to win the American League. In recent years, Dan has founded Collaborate Sports, which aims to provide practitioners personal development and mentorship opportunities as well as consultancy services to clubs and organizations. Dan currently works with around 60 coaches across the world to help target their personal development, provide network opportunities with other practitioners and mentor them through their careers. Dan is also a senior lecturer at the University of Brighton. QUOTES “As an industry we seem to be a big S and a little c… and this is probably an indication of where our S&C industry is at right now" “Energy system development is very specific to adaptation but general to task, whereas conditioning is the use of energy systems within a task, very specific to task but general to adaptation" “I would want my athletes to earn their seat at the table in terms of basic aerobic physical qualities, much like strength qualities” "Energy system development doesn’t necessarily help us in the task, it also helps us just as much between tasks, especially with aerobic qualities” “There is a double bang for buck with aerobic work especially if you take it off feet, we know it has little to know cost off feet and it can also promote some recovery as well” “Sometimes we can’t get an athlete where the need to be in any given season and we need to be comfortable with that" SHOWNOTES 1) Dan’s journey and update since our last episode (#72) 2) The differences between fitness, energy system development and conditioning 3) How to establish training residuals for strength and endurance with your athletes 4) Key principles for energy systems development and the importance of developing a general base 5) The periodisation of energy system development and an example from Team GB 7s 6) Modifications in energy system work based on individual abilities, anaerobic speed reserve considerations and return on training investment 7) Direct and indirect benefits of energy system work and comparison between energy system assessments and sports performance 8) Task specificity in around energy system development, limitations in oxygen uptake versus oxygen muscle saturation and future research in near infrared spectrometry 9) The benefits of understanding how to visualize data and pedagogy for S&C coaches PEOPLE MENTIONED Nathan Heaney Gareth Sanford Andrew Usher

Ben Norcott is an ASCA Level 3 Elite coach specialising in Human Performance. Ben's career spans various industries, including Rugby Union, League, Defence and Law Enforcement. He has worked with numerous organisations, including the Australian Federal Police, Royal Australian Air Force, Rugby Australia, ACT Brumbies, and Vikings Rugby. He is currently Head of Physical Performance for Specialist Operations at the Australian Federal Police, and is responsible for the physical performance and training of personnel in various specialised areas. He also works as the Physical Performance Coach for NRLW & SG Ball teams for the Canberra Raiders. QUOTES “The basics of a coaching philosophy is it is a way for to get information, filter it down, make your decisions and planning and interact with others… and that has to grow and change as you grow and change” “I like to think of a coaching philosophy as a tree, it gets planted in the soil of the environment, it gets enough sunlight and water and it grows to the environment it is in and if you go and try and grow something artificial that is not right for that environment, it is going to die” “The worst place to work is where the senior coach micromanages the developing coach so they can’t understand and have their own philosophy” “if you can influence the intent of a group, and players have good buy-in, you can change a program significantly” “The best way to think of it is performance is like you are in a boat, experience is your captain, and sport science is your navigator“ SHOWNOTES 1) The back story to Ben Norcott and his journey in S&C 2) The in's and out's of having a coaching philosophy 3) The importance of creating a coaching philosophy that allows different people to contribute to success 4) Why you should treat your coaching environment like growing a tree 5) The optimal interaction between senior and junior coaches for coaches to develop 6) The optimal frequency to reviewing your coaching philosophy 7) Examples of when and why Ben has changed his coaching philosophy including a decreased reliance on GPS and increased focus on running technique 8) Practical strategies to help embed and develop your coaching philosophy 9) Key learnings from working with the AFP special ops program 10) The program set up at AFP special ops and how to integrate athlete choice into programs 11) The importance of setting boundaries in the S&C profession and multipliers and diminishers as managers PEOPLE MENTIONED Chris Hickey John Mitchell Ash Jones Mike Anthony

Nathan Spencer is an innovative and passionate practitioner with over 10 years experience developing and coordinating cutting edge strength and conditioning, sports science support and end stage rehabilitation service to elite athletes across the world at the professional level. Currently the Strength & Power Coach at the St. George Illawarra Dragons in the NRL, Nathan has worked extensively in both rugby league and basketball both domestically and internationally. Nathan has held roles at the Wests Tigers, Illawarra Hawks, New South Wales Institute of Sport and Orlando Magic. QUOTES “It was an epiphany moment when you think back to what we are taught and it is a bit more old school periodization; whereas the influence of CBAs, 3 games a week, TV deals etc, our ability to make decisions on training periodization are dictated by schedule which is dictated by money” “In the professional basketball environment, frequency of strength and power work wins out so the initial method was to try and get 2 sessions in a week in season” “The luggage crews with the airlines did not like us when we would travel with around 400kg of weight and bars when we went on the road” “We used CMJ eccentric peak velocity as a marker of whether the athletes were putting in and jumping with intent” “When you are measuring things with force plates, you always stick to the source of truth which is force and time” “Most of us would assume that after an activity that is high intensity in nature, it is fatiguing, not potentiating, but the fatiguing response typically occurs a day or two later so how you capitalise on that potentiation is the next question” SHOWNOTES 1) Nathan’s journey from UNSW undergrad to the NBA and back to professional rugby league 2) Strength and power periodization and programming in a heavily congested competition schedule 3) What to focus on after games in NBA for strength and power work and what these sessions would look like at the Orlando Magic 4) Monitoring neuromuscular responses to games from a CMJ and how these responses changed strength & power prescription 5) The metrics to focus on when using the CMJ and force plates to monitor neuromuscular response 6) The differences between pushing isometrics (overcoming) and holding isometrics (yielding) and their use in the NBA strength & power work 7) Adapting and taking what worked in the NBA to an different sport like Waterpolo 8) How to make this model work of monitoring responses and adapting strength & power work for athletes if you do not have force plates PEOPLE MENTIONED Alex Natera Julian Jones Beau Ryan Caitlin Foord Terence Ross Aaron Gordon

Tim Suchomel has a PhD in Sport Physiology and Performance from East Tennessee State University. He is currently an associate professor of exercise science and the program director for the Sport Physiology and Performance Coaching graduate program at Carroll University. In addition to his teaching, Tim is the Director of the Carroll University Sport Performance Institute (CUSPI) and works as a human performance coach with several teams. He has published 1 book, 10 book chapters and over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles on topics that include weightlifting movements and their derivatives, strength and power development, and athlete monitoring and was named the 2022 National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) Terry J. Housh Outstanding Young Investigator of the Year. Tim is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist with Distinction (CSCS,*D) and Registered Strength and Conditioning Coach (RSCC) through the NSCA and a Level I Performance Coach through USA Weightlifting. QUOTES “Accentuated Eccentric Loading (AEL) is prescribing an additional load that we can handle in the eccentric load before removing it in the concentric phase, and the other thing that has to be involved is pairing the eccentric and concentric phase so there is no delay between them” “The eccentric duration makes a big difference in the adaptation you will get with AEL” “If you were chasing strength from a loading standpoint, the gap between what is on the bar and what is on the weight releasers should be relatively small; however if I have a wider gap, that may favor RFD and power production” “With AEL, I would question is does the individual have the capacity to do it and do you need AEL on every repetition?” “One of things I would tell people first and foremost is when you are going to implement AEL 1) you don’t have to do it with everything and you shouldn’t be doing it with everything and 2) you’re probably not going to be doing this over consecutive training blocks for a long period of time" SHOWNOTES 1) The update on what Tim’s has been up to since our last episode (#31) 2) The ins and outs of Accentuated Eccentric Loading (AEL) and the benefits of using AEL 3) Why it is not always necessary to go supramaximal with athletes doing AEL and maintaining natural movement speed 4) The pros and cons of increasing the eccentric contraction duration e.g., tempo during training 5) AEL programming recommendations to target different training goals (e.g., hypertrophy, strength) 6) Practical advice for implementing AEL with weight releasers, dumbbells or other tools and the best upper body exercise variations for AEL 7) Different repetition schemes for AEL, moderating the influence on fatigue and why flywheel training is not necessarily AEL 8) Key aspects to programming AEL for athletes and factors that influence the time course of recovery for AEL 9) The benefits of keeping training simple for the vast majority of athletes and understanding the underpinning characteristics of how athletes achieve physical performances PEOPLE MENTIONED Jeremy Sheppard John Wagle John Hughes

Brendan Inkster obtained a Masters degree from the University of Technology – Sydney researching applied biomechanics and then went on to work with the Manly Sea Eagles (NRL) in rehabilitation and sports science. After a stint with the New Zealand Warriors (NRL), Brendan is now working for the Parramatta Eels (NRL) where he has gone from the rehabilitation space to heading up their pathways and women’s performance programs. Brendan is an accredited ASCA Elite L3 S&C Coach. During his 16 years in the NRL his passion for rehabilitation has never ceased, always looking for ways to improve player outcomes. When not training the Eels, Brendan has a keen interest in baseball & soccer and helping schools with their high-performance education programs. QUOTES "The basic model of rehabilitation has evolved for me from just supporting a physiotherapist with some running outside of the gym" "When resources are not available, do you need a scan? No, but from an NRL perspective, I believe there is merit to it on almost all occasions" "At the end of the day, the athlete is very accountable for the part they play in their own rehabilitation" "I am a big believer in that you should do at least a week and preferably two weeks of normal training before you start of playing again" "What does the normal week look like? Because if that is what they are used to doing they can probably do that in a rehabilitation schedule" "You can have a high load metabolically and a high load neurally and the main thing you have to remember is just don’t put two high load days back to back” SHOWNOTES 1) Brendan’s back story and how he got his start in professional rugby league 2) The evolution of the rehabilitation model in the NRL, interaction between different staff and the scan or no scan debate 3) The good and the bad of current return to play systems in rugby league 4) Roles and responsibilities in the rehabilitation and the interaction between a general S&C and a rehabilitation S&C 5) Consulting and including athletes in developing a rehabilitation plan 6) Roadblocks and traps in a rehabilitation process, including managing coach expectations, fast-tracking players and one person having to do it all 7) The most challenging rehabilitation in Brendan’s experience 8) Setting up a rehabilitation program for players, high-low days and aligning the program with the NRL squad 9) Balancing out physiotherapy exercises with performance programming 10) Metrics and data to focus on during a rehabilitation and appropriate exit criteria to return to play, including advantages to giving the player the final say PEOPLE MENTIONED Aaron Murphy Donny Singe Balin Cupples Roger Tuivasa Sheck

Gavin Pratt is currently the Director of Strength & Conditioning for the UFC Performance Institute in Las Vegas. He is an accredited ASCA Elite L3 coach and holds a Masters in Exercise Science (Strength & Conditioning) from Edith Cowan University. Prior to this role, he was the Performance Manager at EXOS in Shanghai, China. This involved working with multiple Olympic sports in preparation for the 2018 National Games, after which he then focused on assisting in the development of the country’s surfing program in preparation for the Asian and Olympic games. Gavin was also awarded the ASCA “Mentor Coach of the Year” in 2021 for his work with ASCA L1 & L2 coaches around the world. QUOTES “If we miss training the neck, we miss training a whole part of trunk-neck-head coupling” “We are not just giving any random neck exercises, it is actually in the force vector they are deficient in” "In MMA, strikes happen in around 300ms and as fast as 100ms with forces up to 10-40g” “We have something called an MMA warm up: movement, mobilisation, activation” “Another reason we use static neck exercises to start is to reinforce good posture” “If we have them twice a week, we need to accumulate at least that average force in a fight absorbed across the week” SHOWNOTES 1) Gavin’s journey from TV to strength and conditioning at the UFC 2) The benefits of neck strength for injury prevention in grappling and the trunk-neck-head couple 3) Different force vectors coaches should be concerned with neck strength and the neck strength matrix 4) How to test neck strength with a fixed frame dynamometer, and benefits and drawbacks of different body positions when testing 5) Practical examples of applying the neck strength matrix with a flexion deficiency 6) Reverse engineering neck strength from force absorption in MMA fights and differences in typical wrestler and striker neck strength profiles 7) Other assessments used by the UFC Performance Institute to determine athlete needs 8) The benefits of athlete feedback to improve your performance as a strength & conditioning coach PEOPLE MENTIONED Bo Sandoval Brett Grelle

Dr Lachlan James is a Senior Lecturer, Sport Scientist, Course Coordinator of the Master of Strength and Conditioning degree at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia, and an ASCA Professional L2 coach. He has published over 40 peer reviewed articles including 25 as first or senior author. Lachlan currently supervises 7 PhD students with research projects in the AFL, Super Rugby, Queensland Academy of Sport, the A-League and with VALD Performance. Prior to entering academia, he spent 10 years in professional practice as a strength and conditioning coach and applied sport scientist. QUOTES “The problem we are trying to solve is reducing the vast array of metrics we have available to us from technology down to just a few key ones” “Choose the metric in any cluster that is more reliable and is most interpretable by the end user” “Whatever variable we can get reliable at 100ms in the IMTP, which is typically force at 100ms, is the one I will take” “The reality is force at a certain timepoint, RFD and impulse all contain the same information but the reliability differs markedly” “If isometric strength doesn’t track heavy dynamic strength changes, and you are trying to use it to inform more heavy dynamic strength interventions from something like the DSI, then it might not respond in the way you think” “You have to give feedback on contact time after each rep if assessing reactive strength with a drop jump or 10-5” SHOWNOTES 1) Lachlan’s pathway to becoming a world leading strength researcher at LaTrobe University 2) Strength and power assessments and the vast array of metrics available for practitioners 3) Dimension reduction and making sense of the various clusters of metrics available 4) Picking between the Iso Squat and IMTP as the test of choice for lower body maximal isometric strength and the advantages of looking at net force 5) The importance of set up in the maximal isometric strength tests 6) Choosing between net force at 100ms, RFD or impulse? 7) Key metrics in the countermovement jump, unilateral variations and eccentric measures 8) What strength domains or qualities actually exist? The 5 strength qualities and their relationship to one another 9) Issues with the Dynamic Strength Index 10) Feasibility of assessing the different strength qualities and solutions with large squads of athletes 11) The effect of initial strength on strength training adaptations and the merging of strength qualities in weaker athletes PEOPLE MENTIONED Vince Kelly Warren Young Greg Haff Chris Bishop