shirespeedandstrength.com.au

We will be open to lift on Australia Day from 6.30am to 2pm then doing some renovations to the gym after that. That smell of fresh paint, the new floor, the new lights…… that’s all happening in the next 2 weeks. Get excited.

My article is up over at 70′s Big.

Some clips of lifting and running from the holiday period.

One of the best podasts on diet advice is Robb Wolf’s Paleo Solution .

Check out Episode #112 with Professor Loren Cordain. Also lots of great lifts and training tips.

The kebab plate, with the chicken or lamb, rather than the 'doner' mystery meat, might be one of the better paleo take away options.

If you missed the Solstice Party then you missed Coach Pete's glazed ham.

The opening hours for the gym these holidays are as follows….

Monday December 26th CLOSED

Tuesday December 27th 11.45am to 2pm and 5.45pm to 9.30pm.

Wednesday December 28th 7.30pm-10pm

Thursday December 29th 11.45am- 2pm, 7.30pm-10pm

Friday December 30th CLOSED

Saturday December 31st 11.45am-2pm

The Piz

Since opening, Shire Speed and Strength has hosted 7 Exercise Science/Physiology undergraduates and provided coaching for 22 Personal Trainers.

This gym has taken very seriously the desire of those coming into the exercise industry an alternative resource for practical skills and coaching development.

As a part of a series of interviews, here is one of those new additions to the community and his take on how he got where he is today.

Chris Mooney, can you talk a bit about your current job and situation?

Owner/operator of Fitter Stronger Faster in Castle Hill. This is the business savvy method of saying I am in the beginning stages of running my own private strength and conditioning/personal training space, and learning firsthand how difficult starting your own business can be!

What sort of Courses/certs have you taken, where, when did you graduate?

Bachelor of Applied Science (Exercise and Sport Science), University of Sydney, graduated 2010.

Do you have an competitive experience in barbell sports or athletics?

District/zone level athletics (sprint/hurdle events) when younger, division one football (soccer) at senior high school and local club level.

No competitive powerlifting experience, however have been training (off and on) since 2007. Current goals (for March 2012) are 200kg squat, 250kg deadlift, 140kg bench, 100kg press.  The only 1RM I have done recently was the deadlift, where I pulled a relatively easy 210 but missed 220.

How did your coursework/certs prepare you for your job?

They didn’t. I went into my course interested in strength and conditioning/athletic development and instead learned that the education being received is woefully inadequate for this purpose. Strength training is glanced upon, but not in any useful capacity (students are not taught how to perform or coach free weight movements, and many students have no personal experience with such training – if any training experience at all). Programming concerns are similarly woeful – the industry standard of 8-10 movements, 2-3 sets each of 10-12 reps is ever present.

How did your coursework/certs assist with your lifting abilities?

In no way shape or form did my course expand my knowledge of barbell training or programming.

In fact, the one subject that involved a multi week weight training protocol for demonstrative purposes (in this case an increase in strength) utilised the preacher dumbbell curl. Good times.

Barbell training is largely ignored or taught incorrectly (or at the very least insufficiently to qualify any graduate as competent on the basis of their degree alone).

Where has your knowledge base come from proportionally? Co-lifters/workout partners, coaches, coursework/lecturers, own research, direct experience of coaching/instructing others?

The majority of my knowledge to date has come from seeking out information and my own time under the bar. My time at Shire Speed and Strength (during the third year of my studies) was a refreshing experience and my first encounter with the rare ‘coach who knows what they are doing’. I learnt more in the 100-200 hours of prac spent there than I did at university, without question.

Training my own clients is allowing me to slowly grab subtle pieces of information that you simply can’t get any other way. Proportionally speaking, however, this is still a minor influence as my client base is rather small!

Comments on education streams?

Completely inadequate, and in dire need of a reboot by people who have a clue. The probability of this happening is extremely low and as such my recommendation to those looking to enter the fitness industry is to grab their certifications from TAFE and get as much experience with knowledgeable mentors as possible while improving your knowledge/education (there are a number of online and print resources available).

As an example, I am currently looking to save a bundle of money in order to fund time overseas under the wings of knowledgeable coaches. If only I had the $20,000 spent on my piece of paper education

I basically consider it my responsibility to seek out people and resources from which to learn, as those available through official modes and channels are insufficient, incompetent or simply not interested.

Where will you be in 10 years?

Since high school I have dreamt of opening my own gym, and had an interest in working with athletes in particular. In addition to this I will hopefully have spent time under and learned from a number of international coaches.

Ultimately, I simply want to provide a training space for like-minded individuals to work towards their goals in an environment conducive to doing so. Such environments are, unfortunately, rare or nonexistent in many communities.

Chris currently works out of PTC Sydney in Silverwater and can be reached on 0450 785 570 or @: fitstrongfast@gmail.com

This week we’ve had lifters at the gym from Blaxland, in the Blue Mountains, Castle Hill in Sydney’s Hills District and from Melbourne, Victoria. There is a lot of other gyms in between home and Shire Speed and Strength so there must be something here that they think is worth coming all that way for.

Below is a cut up of lifting clips of Victorian, Adam Gotsis. Adam has visited SSS for the second time in 18 months, this time to work on the quick lifts and also for some skill training towards his goal of a college scholarship in the United States for Gridiron. We’ll try to keep you up to date with how he goes but for a starting point he’ll be on the IFAF World Youth Team in February in Austin, Texas.

Back in August 2009, I received a phone call from a lady in Victoria who had an unusual enquiry to make. Her husband was a about to turn 50, and although he had grown up in the US, he never really got to play organized football there and instead has had to settle for playing some flag gridiron and since living in Australia has been involved with the Croydon Rangers of Gridiron Victoria as their photographer whilst his son played.

What she was looking for was some training intervention and a plan on how he could prepare for the 2010 season. I thought it to be an overly ambitious plan, there is of course the stereotype of  older guys trying to reclaim their youth and going off to buy a Harley Davidson or marry a younger wife…. (maybe this lady was worried about that!)

Jon Johnston, was introduced to me by email and over the phone. His lovely wife Sue had presented him with a 50^th birthday gift of coming up to Sydney for 2 days of training and ongoing advice on how to prepare himself for the 2010 season. His goals were to do well in team testing, be a contributor at least on special teams, play some tight end or where needed, play QB.

I quickly found out that Jon is quite the active fellow. He plays competitive laser-tag with his son, he is an avid hiker and he has kept himself in excellent shape physically. When Jon arrived we were not dealing with a washed up former athlete or a guy who was kidding himself, we had a guy who genuinely was in very good shape who was going to be able to compete physically but just needed a plan, some polish and someone else to say that he wasn’t completely out of his mind.

We had a good 2 days of training. We tweaked some things to help in terms of appropriate conditioning and we worked on QB mechanics. In team testing Jon did very well compared to his team mates and he took the field for the 2010 season despite having a few injury set backs along the way. Just as he had planned, he contributed on special teams, got shuffled around the field including tight end and got to step in at QB a few times. The team was defeated in the Semi Finals and I was extremely happy to here that although Jon had battled a nagging calf injury in the preseason he competed and didn’t die wondering.

All of that, in and of itself was a terrific story, UNTIL I received an email in February this year. Jon had expanded his ambitions. He decided to change clubs and give a crack at getting a started QB job at the Bay City Buccaneers. This was the best running team in the league with the best offensive line and Jon had quietly and consistently worked on his passing abilities to make himself quite the roll out passer.

So what happened next? Well the Buccaneers would roll through Gridiron Victoria, which had grown into a 2 Division league for 2011 and went 10-1-1. The drawn game included this possible world first vs his old team the Croydon Rangers.

In the Semi Final they defeated the Monash Warriors 8-6 and set up a clash with the, who else? The Croydon Rangers. Behind a strong running game and savvy Qb play and leadership from Jon at the Qb spot, the Buccaneers led at the half 14-6 then took out the game resoundingly, 34-14. The first TD was a long hitch and go bomb and at the end of it all one could only look back and see what a remarkable achievement the whole thing was. Here was a guy, 50 years old, who had kept himself in the shape of a man in his thirties, who went from photographer to the Qb leading a team to the championship.

His secret? Well it wasn’t coming to Shire Speed and Strength. It was the every day going out and throwing the ball to targets, the consistency and the attention to detail from careful goal setting. Jon’s story can be found in Victor Hugo’s timeless line ‘All the forces in the Universe are not as powerful as an idea whose time has come’. Jon was the right guy in the right place with the right idea at the right time. What the rest of us can learn from it is that nobody knew all that about Jon and his situation until AFTER he tried it. If you have a goal, and you really want it, then run the experiment because until a 50 year old photographer decided to try and do it, nobody knew that it COULD be done.

One of our favourite writers, ‘The Thinker’ from Powerdevelopmentinc.com and Juggernaut Training Systems has published a masterful review of club based sport in the United States on the EliteFTS.com website.

We shall review here his excellent critique and its implications for us here as well as reference the observations made on this website before.

Part One.

‘The common scenario is one in which the calendar year is constituted by the sequential practice, competition, and camp periods of club and school sport. As a result, the opportunity for a general preparation stage is obviated and, consequently, only the most genetically gifted players are capable of experiencing significant advancement of sport skill.’

The ‘Attritional Development Model’ is a term that I have used before to describe the way in which harsh training models are prescribed in order to find out who the most naturally gifted athletes are rather than raising the training effect for the entire population involved. In youth, what you get is finding out who the early developers are. This is true of the most popular sports in particular. The coaching skills have been specialized into an entire concentration apon the technical-tactic skills only with a clayton’s appreciation for general physical development.

In Part One, The Thinker makes his observations about the Southern California paradigm of club sport, and the greater problem throughout the Continental United States, but he could be talking about Australia, such is the replication of it here.

‘Technical-tactical skill is only as good as its supporting physical preparation. In short, it doesn’t matter how much you practice regardless of how high you can’t jump or how fast you can’t run. Furthermore, the repetitive practice of sport maneuvers that are not executed with mechanical efficiency only serve to further stress the structures of the body that are already ill prepared to handle the load placed upon them.’

There is a strong application of the sporting skill at all costs in Australian sporting development streams. Australia’s sporting environment is also, and in particular, one of competing club, school and elite development teams. Playing games and technical-tactical practice is the homogenized sporting experience.

Using the example of Girl’s Volleyball, Water Polo and Soccer….

‘A multitude of physically underdeveloped young athletes participate in yearlong sequences of club and school practice and competition calendars.  Most plateau very quickly because as soon as they become proficient in the basic skills from a technical standpoint, any further improvement is hindered by their lack of general preparation. As time moves forward the stress of repetitive technical maneuvers outshines their physical structure’s ability to sustain the load placed upon it and injuries are soon to follow.’

Foundational physical abilities are what is lacking in long-term development of young athletes, and these examples could have been found in just about any sport.

In Part 2.

‘Regardless if the athlete is pre-adolescent, an NFL player in late January, or an Olympic champion initiating the beginning of a quadrennial, the training is optimally initiated with a higher volume of non-specific work in order to broaden the foundation required to reach, or at the very least recuperate from the previous year’s, high level special physical preparatory training and competition calendar.’

Again and again the difference of ‘kind’ and ‘degree’ is confused in athletic preparation. Furthermore, the opportunity to properly place exercise prescription along the General-Specific continuum is missed. As we write, football programs in Australia are going back to training, in preparation for the 2012 season. Technical-Tactical time is already being initiated and long distance conditioning dished out.

‘It is illogical to consider preparing an athlete in the technical-tactical or physical regimes without a working knowledge of Biodynamics and Bioenergetics as they pertain to sport.‘

Laps will be run, sandhills will be thrown up on and time and energy will be offered up on the alter of the football gods, yea verily they are pleased with all of this Misapprehension of Toughness.

Welcome back Celine.

Tim gets his first 200kg Backsquat, Josh Snatches 40kg and C&J 60kg,

Rob gets things started for PR friday with his continued linear progress on the deadlift. Today his ramped set of 5 went to 215kg.

Not overly happy with the lack of pretension in the arms on the first few reps and the hitching on rep 5 but he got it.