Coaching Athletes on Their Period: Normalizing the Conversation

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Coaching Athletes on Their Period: Normalizing the Conversation

If you’re reading this, chances are that you have women in your life that are important to you or you may coach female athletes at some point in your career. People often debate whether female athletes should be coached differently than male athletes. This article will talk about important physiological differences between females and males that coaches need to take into account when training female athletes.

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Readiness. Set. Go! How to Interpret and Respond to your Athletes' Readiness Data

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Readiness. Set. Go! How to Interpret and Respond to your Athletes' Readiness Data

How do you know if your athletes are ready to compete?
How do you know if they’re ready to take on the practice or the workout of the day?

It’s hard to assume everyone is always ready or will be ready at the same time. Although your athletes may be enduring the same practices and workout regimens, it does not mean their bodies will all respond the same to them. Each athlete will have a slightly different perceived rate of exertion and they’ll each have their own set of external stressors or factors that are influencing their performance. These external factors may not be additional physical stressors, but may be mental and emotional stressors. Some external factors may include: personal hardships, relationships, school, work, a traumatic event, internal or external pressures, sleep deprivation, lack of nutrition, or financial struggles.

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Pre- and Post-Workout Nutrition

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Pre- and Post-Workout Nutrition

Athletes and fitness gurus are always looking for ways to improve their performance and achieve their goals. This is why knowing what to eat before and after a workout is so important. Consuming nutrients before exercising will not only help maximize your performance and minimize muscle damage, but it will also give you the energy and strength that you need to perform.

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Nutrition For Injury Recovery

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Nutrition For Injury Recovery

When we get physically injured, most of us think about the recovery process as RICE (rest, ice compression and elevation). While this is still vital to healing, what a lot of us miss out on is the chance to actually recover through our own NUTRITION. I’m not talking about simply cleaning up your diet to fuel your body, albeit a great idea, but eating foods that will help the specific stage of healing that your body is in at the time, and in turn, speeding up the recovery process!

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Return to Training Calls for Individualization in Programming

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Return to Training Calls for Individualization in Programming

In our last blog, we provided an overview of returning to sport post-COVID including both general public health guidelines and more specific strength and conditioning recommendations for a safe and effective return to training following inactivity. Here, we will further address a few general principles of returning to training.

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Overtraining vs. Under-Recovery: A Paradigm Shift

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“Overtraining” is a buzzword used in the strength and conditioning industry. Often we’re told that overtraining leads to reduced performance on and off the field, delayed progress, and even injury. But does overtraining exist, or is it simply a misused term, describing another aspect of performance that’s often overlooked? Tyler Koch, MS, CSCS, argues that instead of focusing on overtraining, coaches should focus on their athletes’ ability to recover from training.

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