Gimmicks and fads have been ‘part and parcel’ of societies for centuries. We only need to look to some of the medical treatments employed throughout the ages. Bloodletting, supposedly a fad treatment for a range of maladies, has documented use as far back as 3,000 years ago. Yet that fad was still in vogue up […]
Sometimes I wonder about the supposed advances in sciences, particularly the rapid emergence of technologies, and whether they are often more problematic than helpful. We live in a world where we prefer to see things as causes and effects. Mostly we like to believe that when something happens there has to be an identifiable cause […]
(March 26, 2018) After a few years of working with elite, well-trained athletes, it started dawning on me that we all seemed to be caught up in some kind of bizarre ‘arms race’ of strength and conditioning. All around me it was more, more, more. In the rugby world, coaches wanted players to be bigger, […]
Measuring what for what? I’ve just been working on a chapter from our book (longest title ever – Understanding Strength and Conditioning as Sport Coaching: Bridging the Biophysical, Pedagogical and Sociocultural Foundations of Practice) and I touched on Functional Movement Screens. In my research I came across an old post titled “I HATE the Functional […]
For the past five years, I’ve pulled a nasty trick on students taking my college Exercise Prescription courses. I’d explain that the assessment for the course included a couple assignments and practicals and a final examination accounted for the other 50% of their final grade. Over the past few years, I’d noted some complacency and […]
(February 11, 2018) One of the things that really bothers me about the Physical Activity and Health movement has been their tendency to catastrophise inactivity. ‘Catastrophising’ is a term that seems to have come from psychotherapy, where it was used to describe a tendency to exaggerate the seriousness of a situation and to forecast an […]
Performance enhancing drugs (December 18, 2017) The recent ‘shocking’ (mock shocked face) revelation in the press that up to 80 Kiwi athletes have been caught up in a PED (performance enhancing drugs) bust is all a little bit disingenuous and very much ‘non-shocking’ – really, this should be no surprise! Just because we are perched […]
Exercise adoption, Exercise prescription (December 12, 2017) I don’t believe there are any magic exercises or quick fix solutions with exercise – I certainly haven’t discovered them yet! But….. there is one fundamental principle that I think is vital for successful exercise – that principle is PERSISTENCE. I don’t think it matters what you do, how hard […]
(December 12, 2017) Physical activity and exercise are popular these days. Well, they’re trendy to talk and read about but seems that they are not so popular to actually do. Becoming and staying active can be hard and a real challenge for some people. Exercise adoption is traditionally seen by exercise professionals as a 2-phase […]