Podcasts about athletic performance science

What an episode! In this week’s Strength chat, I had the opportunity to speak with the Head of Athletic Performance & Science for the Irish Rugby Football Union and author of The Language of Coaching, Nick Winkelman. It was awesome to have Nick as a guest in this week’s episode and talk all things coaching. From reading his book, and following the content and he produces, it has opened my mind on how I think about how, and why I coach. An interesting chat with lots of great content that will only help you as a coach. Therefore, in this episode, we covered the same topic as Nicks book, the language of coaching.   You can follow Nick via the following links; Instagram: @nickwinkelman Website: https://www.thelanguageofcoaching.com/ You can follow myself, Coach Cuthbert, via the following links; Instagram: @coach_cuthbert Facebook: Coach Cuthbert Training Systems Website: http://www.coachcuthbert.co.uk/

This is one of my favorite conversations.   Nick Winkelman is an elite communicator. His work title is The Head of Athletic Performance & Science of Irish Rugby , but his methods and research touch all aspects of communication and connection.  His book not only has my favorite title of the year, but is a readable, scientifically-researched manual for all coaches who want to help their athletes move 1% better.  Reach out to Nick on Twitter and tell him I sent you.  Email me to tell me what you thought  Joe@onepercentbetterproject.com As always, thanks for listening! --JF

Today we have on Nick Winkelman, Head of Athletic Performance & Science for Irish rugby and recent author of “The Language of Coaching.”   Nick's primary role is to oversee the delivery and development of strength & conditioning and sports science across all national and provincial teams. Before working for Irish Rugby, Nick was the director of education and training systems for EXOS and oversaw the speed and assessment component of the EXOS NFL Combine Development Program and supported many athletes across the NFL, MLB, NBA, National Sports Organizations, and Military. Nick has his Ph.D. on motor skill learning and sprinting.    On the show we talk mainly about the role communication plays in coaching, and here’s a hint, it's a big one. More specifically we get into internal and external. Cues, how we can use coaching feedback loops and we discuss the role of attention and so much more Here is Nick Winkelman!   Resources Julian Treasure Ted Talk www.languageofcoaching.com   Contact info@languageofcoaching.co www.languageofcoaching.com @nickwinkelman   Show notes courtesy of Zach Casto Nick Winkelman: Head of Athletic Performance & Science for Irish Rugby “Every Coach has a story of success or failure.”  Treat every athlete with respect and wanting to get to know the athletes and make them better.  Coaches are molding young men or women to become better people. Be precise and have your words have purpose so people are focused in on the details.  The quality of a movement is dictated on how we coach.  We will get better throughout time but to improve faster we must coach better. You need to find the right times to be quiet, when to ask a question, and when to talk more.  “How we coach gets less discussion than what we coach.” We need to focus on how we coach more and communicate better.  One way to help reflection is to record yourself during practice and find out how many you ask high level questions and understand when you talked too much.  The players have to feel like they are part of the process.  They also have to feel like they’ve created and own part of their development process.  There needs to be an evaluation process and then a feedback meeting to help the athlete understand where they are at and ways to help improve the process.  We need to reflect and evaluate how we communicate to connect it with how we coach best.  Often times our communication is on autopilot.  After a practice ask these questions: What did I say, How did I say, When did I say, and Did I make a difference? (positively or negatively)  Mic up twice for 6 months, and then after that once a month.  Find out your strengths as a coach.  Find out areas of improvement of coaching.  Reflect on why that needs improved.  Is there any habits or behaviors that should’ve been used?  Get the spark, get the buy in, reflect, and improve the process. (When creating a plan for a coach or player for improvement) The roadmap isn’t difficult, it’s changing the mindset that is difficult.  “Habit is a type of memory that requires no conscious thought.”  “To change these habits we must be conscious of these habits.”  Coaching is a skill that has both good habits and bad habits.  The best communicators have wait time, don’t say filler words, change their tone. and are precise when they speak.  “You have to want to get better because these are elusive skills.”  3 keys of effective communicators: Words we use, our tone of voice (pitch, pace, loudness) and body language. The best communicators tell one story and tell the right story using these elements.  “When we make players better, we become a better coach.” Understand what you’re coaching before you can reflect how to improve.  Know your content.  If we go through the effort of changing then what we are changing MUST improve performance.  “Is the problem a mechanical problem or a coordination problem?” In other words is it a car problem or a driver problem?  If you’re given a race car it doesn’t mean you’re going to win a race.  To change the body you’re going to have to get in the gym and work with professionals to help that person reach their goals.  3 P’s of Performance 1. Position: Can they get into the positions to have success of this skill? Example: Hip flexion to field a ground ball?  2. Power: Do they have the strength to optimally perform the skill? Example: Engine of the car. 3. Pattern:Can they take different positions and patter the movements together? Example: taking the bat back, and swinging.  For anything that is a “car” issue is going to be worked with a strength professional.  The driver problems will be prioritized in order to understand how it can be changed with cues.  You can’t fix a car problem with a driver cue.  You have to find out what will work best.  If you see a player who is struggling to learn.  “You have not taught until they’ve learned.”  Find out if there is a better way to help the player learn and evaluate how well you coach.  If you take the change we’ve made and you’ve owned it, whether or not you know it it will become part of your new normal.  If you require my reminders as your coach, then you have not learned yet.  “The best coaches makes them no longer needed.”  “A good teacher is a giver.”  A good coach doesn’t want to develop athletes who depend on the coach.  Use questions to corral the athlete to the solution. During the next session watch with your eyes before you speak.  “The silence set is the opportunity to show the coach thay the athlete doesn’t depend on you.”  See if the player can self correct.  As long as it looks like they are exploring and trying, keep them going.  People have to struggle and keep trying in order to learn.  “Before you can be understood, you must seek to understand.”  Understand how the athlete communicates and learn how to communicate with the athlete.  “Get to know the person inside of the player.”  Our goal is to hide technical terms inside cues that will help the athlete recall the proper visual to have success.  Cue prop is a prop to showcase the proper technique for the athlete.  Example: show a pencil to help show body positioning. If our athletes aren’t paying attention then we can’t teach them anything.  The athlete who is making eye contact and their body is forward then they are fully focused.  People listen with their eyes, ears, and body. 

Nick shares his coaching journey, what he's learned along the way, and discusses the contents of his new book, The Language of Coaching, which details specific strategies for ensuring coaches are effective in their skill instruction.

Brought to you by PerformBetter.com Nick Winkelman, Head of Athletic Performance & Science at Irish Rugby This is one of the interviews I did for my new book "Be Like the Best: A Guide to Reaching the Top in the Fitness Profession" I spoke to Nick about: His journey to Success Defining Success Recognizing when Success is happening Sacrifices for Success Morning routines and other habits Getting through the tough times Recommended books and people to follow So much more   About "Be Like the Best" During the last 12 years of interviewing many strength coaches, fitness professionals, physical therapists and gym owners, Anthony Renna has accumulated a rolodex of “The Best of the Best” in the fitness profession. This book is a collection of interviews with some of those top successes. Through his conversations, you’ll learn how they evolved in their careers, what habits and traits they believe made them successful, their goal setting processes, how they get through the hard times everyone faces and even some books to read and people they recommend following. After each interview, you’ll find a challenge or action step based on an important takeaway from each interview.  These are designed to encourage you to build the habits to Be Like the Best on your journey to dominating in this profession. As a fitness professional, you’re already making an impact in your clients, athletes and patients. This book will help you stand out in a crowded field and help guide you on the road to success. Go to BeLiketheBest.com for more info   Thanks for Listening!

On this episode, professor and strength coach Tim Suchomel joins us to talk about force absorption, power production, loading protocols, velocity, and more.

Nick Winkelman, Head of Athletic Performance & Science for the Irish Rugby Football Union, is on to talk about Deep Work. From the publisher: One of the most valuable skills in our economy is becoming increasingly rare. If you master this skill, you'll achieve extraordinary results. Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It's a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep-spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there's a better way. In DEEP WORK, author and professor Cal Newport flips the narrative on impact in a connected age. Instead of arguing distraction is bad, he instead celebrates the power of its opposite. Dividing this book into two parts, he first makes the case that in almost any profession, cultivating a deep work ethic will produce massive benefits. He then presents a rigorous training regimen, presented as a series of four "rules," for transforming your mind and habits to support this skill. A mix of cultural criticism and actionable advice, DEEP WORK takes the reader on a journey through memorable stories -- from Carl Jung building a stone tower in the woods to focus his mind, to a social media pioneer buying a round-trip business class ticket to Tokyo to write a book free from distraction in the air -- and no-nonsense advice, such as the claim that most serious professionals should quit social media and that you should practice being bored. DEEP WORK is an indispensable guide to anyone seeking focused success in a distracted world.

Nick Winkelman is the Head of Athletic Performance & Science at the Irish Rugby Football Union. He has earned a PhD from Rocky Mountain University with an emphasis in motor learning and sprinting. Nick is formerly the Director of Education and Performance at EXOS where he headed the NFL Combine Prep and worked with athletes from the MLB, NBA, NHL. We'll cover aspects of the demands of rugby and how to meet these demands through speed training, the weightroom, and conditioning, weekly setups for the off-season and the in-season and the types of monitoring tools the rugby teams are using and how they are implementing and making changes in training based on those tools.

Nick Winkelman is the Head of Athletic Performance & Science for Ireland Rugby. We speak with Nick about the communication mediums coaches use with their athletes including implicit learning vs explicit learning, external stimuli, external vs internal cueing, and how to use constraints to improve the environment of training your team and athletes are exposed to. You can find Nick on Twitter @NickWinkelman

  Highlights of Episode 184   "Hit the Gym with a Strength Coach" -Nick Winkelman, Head of Athletic Performance & Science at Irish Rugby Football Union, is on to talk about his new job, his chapter in Sports Injury Prevention and Rehabilitation- "Assessing Athletic Qualities", including Maximal Strength, Maximal Power and Return to Play guidelines.  He also discussed some great coaching info from his upcoming lecture at Perform Better, "Learning that Sticks- How Analogies Shape Understanding" and sooooooo much more     "Coaches Corner with Coach Boyle"- Coach Boyle talks about his article "Adapting 5-3-1 to a Wider Audience", Culture Lessons from MBSC, and more.     Check out Coach Boyle's Functional Strength Coach 5   "Ask the Equipment Experts with Perform Better" - Erin McGirr joins us to talk about the Current Sale and the the Battle Bars. "The Business of Fitness with Results Fitness University"- Rachel Cosgrove is on to talk about "Social Media and Being Professional". "The Functional Movement Systems Segment" Brett Jones is on to talk about "The Get Up" . Audible.com is one of our new sponsors.  Get a FREE audiobook here.         "Subscribe at iTunes" and Get Automatic Updates If you want to save this podcast to your computer so you can import it into your Ipod or MP3 player, Right Mouse Click to Download Now (for Mac users, press Control and click)