uksca news june 2010.qxp

interested in the training that went on between the
testing. I decided to take a bit of gamble and sat the
first NSCA strength and conditioning accreditation to
take place in the UK. Soon after that, I took up a
position with England Netball, which was one
of the first posts in the UK specifically
for S&C. Around the same time,
British Gymnastics asked me
back as a consultant in a
similar capacity. Following
this, I took up the
position of regional
director of S&C in the
West Midlands
branch of the E.I.S.,
which I did for 4
and a half years
before leaving to
open up Smart
Fitness.
SP: What drove
the decision to
open up your own
facility?
NG: I saw lots of
good athletes run
out of funding and
have no strength and
conditioning support
to turn to, other than
personal trainers in
health clubs. There were
also lots of good athletes and
age groupers with no access to
elite support, and I questioned the
service these guys were getting in the
health and fitness clubs from personal
trainers. I decided to put my money where my mouth
was, and make the quality service that was available to
elite athletes also available to the general population
and sub-elite athletes. I should say, that over the last
few years my views have changed a bit and I’ve found
there are personal trainers out there who are very
good at what they do. It’s like any industry, there are
good and bad practitioners and I’m not so quick to
jump to conclusions now.
SP: Private S&C facilities are quite a rarity in the U.K.
compared to the States. Do you think that we are likely
to see more of these types of facilities emerge in the
next few years?
NG: More and more are starting to pop up. There is
definitely a trend towards more performance based
fitness. If you look at the popular magazines like Men’s
Health, the content has changed over the past 10
years to now include squats, snatches, metabolic
conditioning etc., so I think people are waking up to
the fact that they were built to move, not just be sat
on machines. The demand is definitely there.
SP: What advice would you give to coaches considering
making a similar move and opening up their own
place?
NG: Location is everything. Your facility needs space
and you need to get the best kit your budget can
withstand because people will recognise the quality.
You need to hire good staff who have a thirst to be in
the industry. Also, don’t assume that because you have
worked in elite sport that everyone will be falling over
themselves to come and train with you.
SP: You’ve lectured quite extensively on recovery and
regeneration. What led to this being a particular area
of interest for you?
NG: This became a big area of focus for people during
the England Rugby world cup winning era,
but I was first exposed to it at England
Netball. Looking back, they were
really ahead of the curve with
contrast baths etc. However,
the light bulb really turned
on when listening to a
talk Vern Gambetta did
on training a few
years back. Vern
spoke about a trend
with coaches who
were focusing on
improving the last
1% of
performance, but
the same coaches
often forget about
the other 99%! I
took the same
idea and thought
about relating it to
recovery. I was
seeing athletes doing
a lot of the ‘bells and
whistles’ stuff
(massage, ice baths
etc), but the very same
athletes were drinking red
bull, eating carrot cake and not
getting enough sleep! From
there, I sat down with Mark Jarvis and
came up with the Recovery pyramid. We
basically developed a process, much like training,
where in order to do the fancy stuff, you had to take
care of the basics first. It all links back to the idea of
the 24hour athlete. We maybe only see our athletes
1-2 hours a day and they can potentially go mess
everything up in the other 22 hours of the day by not
following appropriate regeneration techniques.
SP: What are some of the practices you put in place to
track the recovery and regeneration of your athletes?
NG: At England Netball we had training diaries, which
were really useful. We could upload the information
and after a couple of months really start to see trends.
I also have a look at athletes jump height and ground
contact time at the start of sessions to see where we
are. I have to say, a lot of the stuff I use comes more
from the art of coaching as opposed to the
recommendations printed in text books. For example,
when you work with athletes long enough, you can
meet them at the door and during the few minutes’
walk to the gym know if it’s going to be a big session
or not. While on tour, the netball girls would do
multiple jumps for distance and I would measure them.
However, you could also look the other way and just
listen to the foot contacts and tell from the thuds and
slams that maybe it wasn’t a day for high volume.
SP: There seems to be a move away from the
programming and monitoring of time under tension
(T.U.T.) in training programmes recently. Why do you
stick with it?
NG: Alywn Cosgrove came up with the idea of how the
industry will often over react or under react to
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UK STRENGTH AND CONDITIONING ASSOCIATION
© UKSCA | Issue 18 | Summer 2010 w: www.uksca.org.uk e: info@uksca.org.uk