Melbourne athletic development Blog

Where the nuances meet.

In our team meeting last week we discussed a case of patella tendon pain that was being stubborn to the conventional approach to tendon management. But before you say it out loud, what is conventional management of tendon pain? And I guess that is what got us talking...

Downhill like a rolling stone.

Whilst walking a few days ago I arrived at the bottom of a hill and decided that I wanted to run up it. I'm not sure why I decided to run, but I suddenly felt an urge to break into stride. So I pushed myself step by step to the top of the hill. At the top, moderately...

Vomit, Injury and a Gold Medal. 

Waking up this morning was a little dreary. Even as I write this I am still rubbing my eyes as I try to get them to stop stinging. To say that yesterday was eventful, would be putting it lightly. But as Hunter S Thompson said, ‘Buy the ticket, take the ride’.  In...

Super Saturday

How did it go yesterday?  This will sound dumb, but I am probably one of the worst people to ask that question. I don't say this to be obtuse, but in a performance setting there are often outcomes that occur that fit into two categories that you cannot become overly...

Coach Reflections Day 1 (Version 2)

Coach Reflections Day 1 (Version 2) It was a false start. At least in a metaphorical sense. With the 2023 National track championships kicking off the first event that our team was to be involved in came and went without a result. It is typical for rounds to be...

Lining up your stressors 

I get asked by younger clinicians and coaches very often about programming, particularly structuring of a weekly or similar length microcycle. For the uninitiated a microcycle is a cluster of training sessions or intervention units that are placed into a period...

You need to get your stress in order: Part 2 

Structuring any intervention requires balancing a number of competing interests. We spoke in our last article about the idea that periodisation is essentially lining up our stress units to match the needs of the individual/s and the activity that that they are taking...

You need to get your stress in order.

Periodisation can often appear complicated. For the uninitiated periodisation is the organization of training or an intervention to achieve a particular performance or characteristic within a given time frame. This makes sense for example when we plan out a return to...

That is impossible to measure.

Two weeks ago we spoke about objectivity and how using objective measurements is often helpful in establishing a clear and unbiased picture of what is occurring. But what happens when the objective data doesn't provide the full picture?  A recent article by Lluc...

The false economy of health, performance and physical training. 

‘You must look at the fundamentals’. You hear this phrase often in finance circles. And for the most part it has been an accurate principle to live by. But as we have shifted into the information age, the age of fake news, the age of hype and bs, we have seen things...