Reflections from “Designing Your Environment” CPD Event with Sport Wales
This blog article was written by Calum Burdett, who was able to attend a CPD event organised by Seb Moran of Sports Wales. This was all made possible thanks to donations to the Practitioner Development Fund, from peers within the field, so thank you to all those who contributed, and thank you to Calum for summarising his experience at the event!
Recently, Collaborate Sports invited me to attend Welsh S&C CPD Network event in Cardiff. Featuring talks by John Kiely and Brendan Cropley, the theme for the day was ‘Designing your environment’.
Talk 1 - Understanding, designing and optimising training processes - John Kiely.
“How would you increase an athlete’s back squat 1RM?”
Ask most Strength and Conditioning coaches and they will explain to you a certain training method to elicit specific adaptations. They might include concepts like progressive overload and specificity. Logically, we tend to follow the model of stimulus and adaptation. However, this model does not always apply. Kiely argues that this traditional perspective stems from the 'biomedical model', in which doctors assumed that prescribing certain medicines or surgeries could cure certain ailments I.e., it is the medicine alone that treats the patient.
Similarly, as S&C coaches we assume the same causal relationship between stimulus and adaptation, that the training stimulus alone leads to adaptation. However, this idea has come under some scrutiny. Through research we know that there exists a variety of responses to training. The linear and mathematical relationship often assumed is not as concrete as we may have assumed. For example, in a 2001 study by Wilmore et al., where 631 people followed the same 20-week cardiovascular training programme some saw a 40-50% increase in VO2 max, while 5% observed no change at all. This suggests that something is missing from our equation. There has to be more to it: training stimuli cannot be solely responsible for adaptation.
“Adaptation is clearly a multidimensional process.”
So, what explains this gap between stimulus and adaptation?
Typically, we cite training history, genetics, nutrition and sleep as variables relevant to different training responses. Keily suggests that another answer to this question can be found in the placebo effect. I am sure that we are all aware of the placebo effect - that when subjects are exposed to a false intervention, they still experience a change in symptoms. For example, Moseley et al., 2002 found that a placebo group who received a fake surgery, experienced equal outcomes to those who experienced an invasive knee surgery.
Similarly, an athlete's beliefs around the training process can influence the adaptations they experience. In one study, female cyclists were given a placebo, which led to a 0.7% improvement in performance. The athletes had even been told beforehand that they were taking a placebo, yet their scores still improved.
In a world of marginal gains, where we are always looking for the 1%'ers, placebo could represent an untapped aspect of performance.
Practically, this implies that it is worthwhile considering and addressing athletes' attitudes towards the training process. If athletes have positive attitudes towards the training programme and value it, they may experience better performance outcomes. Through formal and informal conversations with athletes, we can screen their beliefs toward the training process, and attempt to deconstruct dysfunctional beliefs. We should look to collaborate with athletes, so they buy into the process.
This further demonstrates the value of buy-in, as athletes that do not buy-in could literally adapt less to training. Exploring well-being as a facilitator of human thriving - the athlete performance conundrum.
Talk 2 - Brendan Cropley
The second talk of the day came from Brendan, which began with an engaging discussion around what it means to be a ‘high-performance environment’. Some common themes were:
● Professional standards underpinned by agreed behaviours.
● Safe to fail.
● Adaptable.
● Alignment towards a clear purpose.
● Fun.
There was an interesting debate around the role and framing of failure in elite sports.
Rather than a necessary negative, failure is instead an important part of development,
It was agreed amongst the group that through failure, athletes can learn about themselves and their areas for development, and develop the resiliency for the failures that are bound to occur during a career in elite sport. Often though, we design our training environments, particularly at the academy level, to be as safe and comfortable as possible, with players’ nutritional, social and psychological needs met by the programme. However, sport is challenging and tough, so at some level our training should reflect this. This means that when designing training programmes, we should consider how we are presenting athletes with challenges and adversity, through which they can grow and develop.
The next discussion centred around “What does it mean to thrive”?
The concept of ‘thriving’ can be built around two pillars – well-being and performance. If you’re happy, you are probably going to engage in the behaviours required for you to perform. Copley argued that human thriving is underpinned by the three basic human psychological needs:
● Autonomy
● Competency
● Relatedness
This means that your program should allow athletes some choice. We can do this by giving athletes the opportunity where possible to have input on their own programming. We should give our athletes the opportunity to do things that they’re really good at of course, but also we should challenge them appropriately. Challenges should feel difficult, but attainable.
Finally, there should be room for connectedness and a strong support network surrounding both the practitioner and the athlete. Note that these three underpinning needs also apply to practitioners. As S&C coaches, we spend a lot of time on sets, reps and exercise selection. But I think we often neglect the psychological aspect of our programming.
As Kiely and Copley both suggest, there is much more to training than just the physical execution of S&C programmes. Practitioners should begin to consider the wider reaching influences on their programme, and review how they can contribute to the thriving of athletes on their programme.
Moseley, J. B. et al. (2002). "A controlled trial of arthroscopic surgery for osteoarthritis of the knee." New England Journal of Medicine 347, 2, 81-88.
Saunders, B, et al. (2019). "I put it in my head that the supplement would help me": Open-placebo improves exercise performance in female cyclists. PLOSOne. 2019 Sep 24;14(9)
Wilmore, J.H et al. (2001). Cardiac output and stroke volume changes with endurance training: The HERITAGE Family Study. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. 33. 99-106.