Sports Science Support on Mount Kilimanjaro - Part 3
After breaking a Guinness World Record for the highest altitude game of football, Dawn Scott of the US Women’s National Team has been sharing a series of posts on the journey up Mount Kilimanjaro. In part one, Dawn talked about the preparation for the once in a lifetime challenge. In…
Sports Science Support on Mount Kilimanjaro – Part 2
In Part 1 of Sports Science Support on Mount Kilimanjaro, Dawn Scott of the USWNT explained the purpose behind the world record attempt and described the preparation behind such a mammoth undertaking. In Part 2 Dawn recounts the climb up to the Kilimanjaro summit, a practice game on day 5 and…
Sports Science Support on Mount Kilimanjaro - Part 1
This summer we followed from afar with admiration and amazement as a group of support staff and female footballers took on Mount Kilimanjaro. Not only did they attempt to hike to an altitude of more than 5000m, but would aspire to break the Guinness Book of Records for the highest…
Sports Science for Athletes Insight
Recently I was asked by the team at Athletes Insight if I would be interested in writing an ‘Expert Contributor’ post for their training community. CEO Rich Stead and I were course-mates in our Undergraduate degrees in Sports Science at Loughborough University. I’m really excited (and jealous) that he has…
Exploring the Science Behind Resting Athletes
It seems not a week or even a day goes by without another sport story in the media on rest. In football, Jose Mourinho has bemoaned his team’s fixture congestion over Christmas and recently with the Europa League and domestic scheduling. Perhaps with a strong case considering Leicester City won…
Acute:Chronic Workloads and Rehabilitation: A Case Study
Last month I was invited to write a guest blog on Plinths and Platforms about load monitoring and rehabilitation. It included an overview of Banister’s Fitness-Fatigue concept, the acute:chronic workload ratio and how it can be incorporated into the Return to Play (RTP) decision. You can find that post HERE but…
Notes From: Monitoring #TrainingLoad16 at Aspire Academy
I wasn’t going to write a blog post on this week’s Training Load Monitoring conference held at Aspire because all the presentations will apparently be made available online, plus all the papers presented will be published in a special edition of IJSPP next year (which by the way is such a…
Interview: Recovery Strategies with Hugh Fullagar
Hugh Fullagar is currently undertaking a combined role as a doctoral candidate and sport scientist at the Institute of Sports and Preventative Medicine (FIFA Centre) within the University of Saarland, Germany. Specifically, he is studying the effects of different recovery strategies (most notably sleep) on various recovery and performance…
What professional athletes think about while they recover from serious injuries
An athlete’s life is defined by action, so being injured and having to go through the gradual steps that lead to rehabilitation and recovery can be maddening By James Willstrop for the Guardian Sport Network Willstrop James Willstrop in action against Nick Matthew (left) in 2014. Photograph: Steven Paston/Action Images…
Nutrition for Football
Two years on from Nick’s accident, I wanted to mark the anniversary by sharing one of his articles. He wrote this article in 2004 but it is amazing how relevant it still is more than a decade on! Please enjoy and feel free to share your thoughts. ‘Your role is to…