Feature Team of the Week: Cricket

Feature Team of the Week: Cricket

S&C Coach: Ben Warman

SHU Cricket Club have made an incredibly positive start to their strength and conditioning work so far. With the club not having received S&C support before, the athletes have thrown themselves into their new training regime with a refreshingly positive and inquisitive attitude. With many of the group being new to formal strength and conditioning, the overall theme for the current training cycles is movement competency. This means the athletes are focusing on developing their skill in performing the 7 Primal Movements; squat, hinge, lunge, push, pull, brace and rotate. An example session can be seen below;

The exercises have been chosen to address multiple primal movements in one session, as well as developing core/trunk control and conditioning through a time-constraint based finisher. The main body of the session is completed at a relatively steady pace, with an emphasis on technique rather than the weight on the bar.

Subsequent training cycles will begin to challenge these freshly learnt movement patterns through complexity in the form of different loading strategies and multi-planar exercises. This will involve some typical strength work (i.e. straight sets and reps or reps off time) as well as explorative “obstacle course” style training to help implicit learning. By challenging each movement pattern in a variety of contexts, the short-term goal is to facilitate motor learning and deepen the attractor well or “groove” of each skill. 

I have no doubt that all members of the group will continue to make strong progress over the coming weeks, solidifying their initial understanding of each primal movement pattern. In the long-term, we hope that the athletes will be able to transfer their new strength, range of motion and coordination into their training sessions and matches. As cricket often involves reactive and unpredictable movements, we believe we are providing the athletes with the skills and physical qualities to improve as players.

Feature Team of the Week: Swimming

Team Hallam Strength and Conditioning

Feature Team of the Week

Swimming

S&C Coach: Matthew Croyle

When are your competitions?

BUCS Short Course 9^th-11^th Nov

BUCS Long Course 15^th-17^th Feb

BUCS Teams 23^rd-24^th March

What is your training schedule?

Monday – Swim 1 hour

Tuesday – Swim 1.5 hours

Wednesday – Swim 1.5 hours & S&C 1.5 hours

Friday – Swim 1 hour & S&C 1.5 hours

Sunday – Swim 1 hour & Optional S&C

Comments from Matt Croyle - S&C Coach

Swimming have already shown great commitment to S&C every week with many training in the gym three times a week alongside 4-5 pool sessions a week. We regularly have 15-25 swimmers in each session, they are a team I always look forward to coaching as they want to get better and improve every session.

There are only three competitions I am trying to peak the swimmers for which gives me lots of time to prepare them as best I can. This BUCS Short Course competition in November has meant we have only had a short preparation time, effectively 8 weeks. These 8 weeks were split into two 4 week blocks, the first with a big GPP emphasis on movement patterns, work capacity and shoulder health. This allowed the first year students to accustom to our way of training and build good training and movement habits. We are currently in the second block as we lead up to BUCS Short Course in November, it has an emphasis on strength and power with a taper to optimise performance. The first two weeks of the programme can be seen below.

Training towards the BUCS Short Course we are trying to improve strength and power, specifically to influence power off the blocks and during turns. These are two specific points of a race that I believe I can influence as a S&C coach. In the programme we use exercises that are reactive in nature, utilising the stretch shortening cycle, requiring rapid acceleration and triple extension through the hip, knee and ankle. These exercises are programmed early on in the session – in the EXT (Extended warm up aimed at priming the nervous system) and first supersets - with long recovery times to ensure that athletes are not performing them fatigued and leaving adequate recovery between sets to attain high velocity each set. Following these exercises athletes complete primary strength exercises and then accessory work.

Feature Team of the Week: Waterpolo

Team Hallam Strength and Conditioning

Feature Team of the Week

Waterpolo

S&C Coach: Nick Daly

Water polo has hit the ground running this season, with big numbers in the gym and even bigger numbers in the pool. Both teams set the competitive season off to a flying start: the women’s team beat top dogs Durham, and the men showed they have something to prove, beating Liverpool.

The team have two strength and conditioning sessions a week, one of which provides the additional challenge of getting out of bed early on a Monday morning. Nevertheless, players have shown great commitment and dedication to the S&C programme and don’t look like they’re slowing down any time soon.

The main training challenge is the varied ability of players, so the first 4 week training block is focusing on building an athletic base to accommodate experienced and inexperienced players in the gym. The aim over the next 2 months is to continue to build an athletic base and develop everyone’s movement competencies while still providing a stimulus and motivation for the experienced players among the teams by increasing the training volume and incorporating more complex movement patterns.

This year we welcomed a large cohort of GB athletes, who are showing great promise for the future of the club’s success and progress in the coming years. Two years ago ex Hallam stars Brooke Tafazolli, Tom Grieve, Elliot Kelly and GB goalkeeper Peter Pickford who is still with us played in the world student games in Taipei. This season we aim to send a similar number of our young hopefuls to the next set of games in Napoli in summer 2019.

Feature Team of the Week: Equestrian

Team of the Week:

EQUESTRIAN 

1. What league do you compete in?
We compete in the BUCS Championship League, we've just had one of our riders qualify for the regional competitions. 

2. What is your training schedule?
We train every Wednesday and Friday as well as having Strength and Conditioning every Tuesday. 

3. Can you tell us about your competitions?
We are in a mini league with three other Universities, each University takes it in turn to host at the yard they train at, so we compete three times a year. There are four riders in a team and we compete in two disciplines; dressage and show jumping. You never know what horse you're going to ride on, its picked at random on the day to test the ability of the rider. 

4. What do you work on in S&C?
In our S&C sessions we cover a bit of everything however there is a large focus on building core, glute and leg strength which is essential for riding. 

5. How has S&C helped you develop as athletes?
S&C has really helped with assisting the improvement of our riders such as recovering from serious injuries from training sessions as well as general improvement on our core stability which has shown such a difference in our scoring in competitions. 

 

Lisa Cockburn, the Lead S&C Coach for Equestrian says:

Equestrian have been one of the most rewarding teams to coach this year. Only a few of the riders had done S&C before and most had never stepped foot in a gym before. We’ve had a consistent 10-15 riders attend weekly and not only have we seen progress in their movement competencies and their weights increasing but also in their confidence in the gym.

The team have one S&C session a week so my main priorities were to develop their fundamental movement competencies and become competent with the basic lifts in order to build a foundation of strength, to improve their knowledge and confidence with training so that they are able to train away from the S&C suite and continue to train when they leave university, and to have a better awareness of how movements should feel, i.e. shoulder retraction so that they can hold a better posture when riding and to create stability within the shoulder to reduce the risk of injury.

This is the latest programme the girls are working on. We’re aiming to further develop overall strength now that the girls are comfortable lifting a heavier load. I’ve played around with various ways of programming and this tri-set of a lower body lift, upper body lift and core stability/strength has worked best so far as they have more time to rest in between training each body part. We also use pauses and longer eccentric phases to increase time under tension and reinforce correct technique.

I wish the girls the best of luck with their 3 peak challenge and I’m sure your hard work in the gym will pay off.

 

 

On Saturday 25th March, Sheffield Hallam Equestrian team will be tackling the Yorkshire 3 Peaks! This is a 40km walk and will take up to 12 hours! They are training hard raising money for two charities which are Sheffield MIND and The Millhouse Farm Animal Sanctuary.

 

"As we are only a small club we decided at the start of the year we wanted to give back to the Sheffield community and make a big impact. We’ve been volunteering at Mill House Farm Animal Sanctuary since November and go at least once a week, usually two or three times in different groups to help care for the animals there who have all been miss treated or given up. We help them exercise the pony’s and dogs, muck out the pigs, sheep, horses and cows. Help take hay bail deliveries and basically do what we can to help. This lead us to the decision that we wanted to help them even more and challenge ourselves and do the Yorkshire 3 peaks to fund raise money for the Sanctuary and also Sheffield. MIND is another charity the club believe do brilliant work and fully support as mental health which is an incredibly important topic that is usually over looked"

Click here if you would like to support Hallam Equestrian Yorkshire 3 Peaks!
https://www.gofundme.com/hallam-equestrian-yorkshire-3-peak

Feature Athlete of the Week: Georgia Hollis Lawrence

Feature Athlete of the Week:

Georgia Hollis Lawrence 

1. What event do you compete in?
I compete in 60m Hurdles (indoor) and 100m hurdles (outdoor).

2. When and how did you get into athletics? 
I joined an athletics club at about 7 years old doing different events.  When I was about 12, a few people suggested I should try sprint hurdles which I did. I spent some time competing in the 300m hurdles before coming back to shorter distance hurdling. 

3. Who do you compete for and when?
As well as competing for Hallam, I compete for City of Sheffield AC and will be competing for them in the outdoor season which starts next month.


4. What is your greatest achievement as a athlete?
I think my greatest achievement is probably when I ran my indoor personal best in the England Championships Final this year. 

5. What is your current training schedule?
I do two strength and conditioning sessions per week, and about 3 track sessions which is either hurdling or running. 

6. How do you feel S&C has helped you develop as an athlete?
I think S&C has helped me improve on a lot of my weaknesses in the gym like technique, which has made a difference to my running as it’s helped me to prevent a lot of the injuries I used to have. I have gained strength and power which has in turn helped me to become faster.

Andrew Langford, Head of S&C says: 

Georgia has been really great to work with this year. It is sometimes common in athletics for people to only want to train in a ‘functional’ or ‘specific’ way. It has been refreshing with Georgia because she has been willing to learn new techniques and spend time developing her foundational strength and movement qualities. This has now given us a solid base to start developing her speed qualities.

The session shown is from one of her early programmes. The session started with an exercise encouraging her to develop force as quickly as possible. The exercise also requires a controlled eccentric landing which can have great benefits for soft tissue development. We then used some compound lifts to develop key areas and build strength qualities. We are now progressing onto more reactive and plyometric type exercises, helping with her expression of force at higher speeds.

Feature Team of the Week: Women's Hockey

Feature Team of the Week:


WOMEN'S HOCKEY

1. What BUCS League do you compete in?
    
 We compete in the Northern 1A

   

2. What is your training schedule?

We have S&C on Monday mornings as well as a pitch training session in the evening. We also have S&C on Friday's. Tuesday's and Thursday's are free to do individual recovery sessions. 


3. When are games?

Games are every Wednesday  

3. What kind of training do you do in S&C? 

We spend about 15 minutes at the start of the session doing prehab and dynamic stretching all together. Our programmes are usually 4 weeks and our current programme focuses on strength and power.

4. How do you feel S&C has helped you develop as athletes?

S&C has developed the team in various physical aspects. Everyone has gained strength and speed as a result of training meaning that this has allowed us to perform to a higher standard in games. Team S&C sessions have strengthened the cohesion within the group as everyone is encouraging each other to improve off the field and most importantly, enjoying it. 

    

Andrew Langford, the Lead S&C Coach for Women's Hockey says:

The Women’s Hockey team has been one of our flagship programmes for the past 4 years. They were one of the first teams to fully commit to making S&C an integral part of what they do. During this time they have seen a number of promotions in BUCS and have really progressed as a club. They now have 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th team sessions as well which demonstrates the benefit across the entire performance pathway.

 This is session 1 from the most recent programme for the Women’s Hockey 1^st Team. This is the 5^th cycle of the current season and we are starting to incorporate some more aspects of power expression. The girls have done a great job this year and we have seen some excellent improvements in strength and quality of movement. We’ve also had a really low injury rate, which is testament to their commitment to the programme.

Feature Team of the Week: Men's Rugby Union

Feature Team of the Week:

Men's Rugby Union

1. What BUCS League do you compete in?
The Men's 1s compete in BUCS North 1A, Mens 2’s compete in Northern 3B and 3s compete in Northern 5B.


2. What is your training schedule?
Monday

A.M: S&C 
P.M: Rugby Session

Tuesday

A.M: Recovery session

Wednesday

P.M: Compete (or extra Rugby session)

Thursday

OFF

Friday

A.M: S&C
P.M: Rugby Session

Saturday

Optional Weights/Conditioning session

Sunday

OFF

3. When are games?

BUCs games are Wednesday, and some players
compete for local or home teams on the weekends.

4. What kind of training do you do in S&C? 

Our S&C sessions are built around trying to develop well-rounded robust athletes to cope with the demands of Rugby. We try to hit all of this throughout the week including power, strength and aerobic conditioning. Players will often come to sessions with collision injuries from previous games, so individual sessions will be given to keep the players progressing which will involve exercises the physios have given integrated into the team session.

5. How do you feel S&C has helped you develop as athletes?

S&C is helping the team become a lot fitter, faster and stronger, which is helping keep the boys ready for both training and games. S&C allows some players need to focus on their individual weaknesses, whether than is mobility, movement, strength or fitness related.



Jordan Webster, Graduate S&C Coach, leads the Men’s Rugby Union Programme, here’s what he had to say about the programme:

“Men’s Rugby Union this year had a lot of new players and also lost a lot of good players last year. Due to this, a lot of our players haven’t really done strength and conditioning. So as a relatively ‘new’ athletes to strength training, we started basic. I had 3 main objectives to complete by the end of this year:

1. Get the majority of players to buy into S&C and what it can do for their performance. This was made so much easier due to a strong leadership group that were senior players and encouraged participation. This was an important step in creating a performance culture for the team.

2. Build a huge base. As a relatively young and smaller team, we needed to develop a huge foundation of hypertrophy and strength so we can compete with the more physical teams.

3. Educate the players. Teaching/refreshing the players on the basics of recovery, nutrition, hydration and mobility. This is extra important for a team that has such an intense/busy week of training/competing.

A lot of the work we do with the team is develop a solid foundation of movement and strength. We started as basic as you could go, mastering the basics of squatting, deadlifting, lunging, pressing and pulling. We spent the first 3 weeks of our programme with circuit type training, getting the team fit and ready for the high work load that was going to follow. Our programme from the start of the semester into Christmas ran loosely as follows:

Week 1-3: Work Capacity Circuits (30 seconds ON/15 Seconds, 10 different exercises, 3-4 rounds, 2-3 times a week)

Week 4-8: Hypertrophy/Strength (3-4 sets of 6-10 reps, full body
workouts, 3-4 times a week)
Week 8-12: Max Strength (3-5 sets of 2-6 reps, full body, 2-3 times per week)

Our programming follows a linear periodisation model which finishes with Varsity. One of the biggest issues we have with rugby, being the amount of contact injuries we pick up. This isn’t something I can control, so my job is to work around that injury and still train the rest of the body so that we don’t lose speed or power in-season. If the shoulder is injured, there is still many ways to train the lower body including Leg Press, Split Squat variations and Squats. 

If the team does have a big game on a Wednesday, we may reduce volume (NOT intensity) on the Monday session. Although we don’t do this too often, because if we skipped 2 sets of squats every week, we are missing up to 160 sets over the course of the September-April playing schedule. That is a lot of opportunities to get stronger and create an adaptation. This doesn’t mean we don’t react to the athlete’s readiness as they come through the door because we do, but its knowing the difference between ‘cant be bothered’ and ‘NEEDS a recovery session’

Here is one of our Rugby Union 4 week programmes, with an emphasis on Strength and Power using Front Squat, Deadlifts and Bench Press as the main movements of the week.

Feature Team of the Week: Men's Volleyball

Feature Team of the Week

Men's Volleyball

1. What BUCS League do you compete in?

The Men's 1s compete in BUCS Premier North, and the Men's 2s compete in BUCS Northern 2B.

2. You also have a link with a National league programme?

The club has a strong link with the Sheffield Volleyball Club, which has teams that compete at various levels, including Super 8’s and Division 1.

3. What is your training schedule?

We usually have 3-4 court sessions per week, with two team S&C sessions per week, as well as additional drop-ins for individual work and top ups when we don’t play.

4. When are games?

We compete for Hallam in BUCS on Wednesdays and for Sheffield Volleyball Club on Saturdays and Sundays, meaning we sometimes have 3 games a week.

5. What kind of training do you do in S&C? 

We aim to get into the S&C before 7am, so that we’re ready to go. We then usually have a team stretch followed by some activation and dynamic mobility to get us all going, which is quite important when we have training until late the night before! We all work off a team-based programme that usually last around 4 weeks, but we do all have individual work to complete as well to ensure that we’re all working on our individual weaknesses. At the moment our programme has a focus on max strength and power, which has the aim to maximise jump height.

6. How do you feel S&C has helped you develop as athletes?

S&C has given everyone the opportunity to develop physically, not only in the team sessions but also having the chance to drop in for one to one sessions with Aden has helped a lot of the team to develop further and a lot quicker.

Aden Flannagan, Assistant S&C Coach, leads the Men’s Volleyball Programme, here’s what he had to say about the programme:

“Programming for the Men’s Volleyball Team can be quite a task at times, compared to most sports here at Hallam they have quite a high on court training load. When you take the nature of the sport into consideration, some positions may be jumping up to 300 times per session, so potentially 1200 times per week, in training alone. To many this may not seem like a lot, but that’s huge amount of volume, then plus the 3 potential games per week, which can make programming quite difficult.

What we’ve tried to do so far this year is to reduce the amount of impact via jumping based exercises. We’ve had a big focus on landing mechanics as well as emphasising eccentric strength in exercises to ensure that every athlete can manage the training load of Volleyball, in order to minimise the chance of conditions like tendonitis to occur.

Volleyball started with us in the S&C earlier than every other team at Hallam this year, meaning it gave me the opportunity to have a real impact on the boys, by being able to physically develop all of them prior to on court training and games had even started. We usually work off a 4-week block, which we adjust the gym-based training volume based upon how fatigued they are, as well as how many games they may have that week. Very similarly to what Andy uses with Men’s Hockey, I also use 5 repeated jumps to monitor power output on a weekly/daily basis. Using this gives me the opportunity to monitor both individual and team progression, but also to monitor fatigue levels of each athlete.

Above shows the data of how we have monitored the boys throughout the BUCS season so far. As you can see before the Christmas there was a great deal of inconsistency, which is simply due to the team’s training and playing volume, thus causing regular fluctuations. Although as a team they have all got stronger throughout the year so far, because of the jumping volume that they are exposed every training session and game, it causes a neuromuscular fatigue resulting in jump scores being affected.

Over the last 4 weeks we have had a huge focus on trying to develop lower limb max strength, as well as overloading the stretch shortening cycle to maximise jump height. The team in general have a strong work ethic and are in the gym more than twice per week, with some of the boys getting in the gym to train up to 4 times per week, all of which I try to programme for to maximise their athletic performance. You can find their latest programme below to see what we’ve used to maximise jump performance over the last 4 weeks”.