ASCA Podcast #29 - Mike McGuigan

Mike McGuigan is a Professor of Strength and Conditioning at Auckland University of Technology and an Adjunct Professor at Edith Cowan University. He is currently Senior Associate Editor for the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research and Associate Editor for the Journal of Australian Strength and Conditioning. Mike worked for several years as a Sport Scientist with different sports and he regularly consults for elite sports in the areas of strength and power assessment and athlete monitoring. He is also a National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist with Distinction. QUOTES “Decide what you are trying to answer and then develop your needs analysis for that sport” “We started off with a lot of tests and then reduced it down to what was required” “We moved to a model where the testing is embedded in the program” “If you’re not doing it (testing) on a systematic and regular basis then there’s pretty big gaps where you’re not getting information and things can change very quickly” ‘For athletes, there is enough anxiety and pressure associated with the sport anyway and sometimes if you can remove that by embedding it in the program, you get better information” “In sport science, we tend to overreport data” “There are probably not many methods that are as user friendly (as sRPE) that gives useful information to act upon” SHOWNOTES 1) Mike’s journey from NZ to Australia to US to Australia to NZ 2) Profiling of athletes 3) Examples of profile – court sport (netball) versus field sport (rugby) 4) Logistics around profiling and embedding it in your program 5) Fundamental concepts for establishing what is meaningful and useful in testing 6) Reporting to coaches and athletes and their preferences 7) Mike’s big rocks for strength & power development 8) Focusing on strengths and weaknesses – when to do what? 9) The murky window of getting transfer to sport 10) Peak power load and how you should use it 11) Practical considerations for strength & power work after needs analysis? 12) Monitoring of players (sRPE, wellness, VBT) 13) Next areas of research for Mike – eccentric training, how do people interpret information for presentation and action 14) Getting information from outside the s&C / sport science field e.g. “Genius at Play” PEOPLE MENTIONED Tony Shield Anthony Blazevich Nic Gill Rob Newton Bill Kraemer Jeff Volek Carl Foster Travis Triplet Will Hopkins John Lythe (Excel Tricks For Sport) Angus Ross Jacqui Tran Valerie Adams Werner Gunthor Jon Conway (“Genius at Play”)