500 Words a Week - Highlights from the PLAE Labs Conference

While it’s been incredibly hard to summarize a wonderful conference hosted by Chris Tombs with 8 different speakers into around 500 words, the below points are some of my favourites. It is by no means an all inclusive list, I’m sure other aspects stood out more to other people.

My favourite points from Rhodri Lloyd were that we must aim to encourage a lifetime involvement in sport and physical activity when working with youth sport. Lloyd highlighted that training at greater intensities leads to greater results, S&C training within youth sport provides the foundations that allow young athletes to consistently train at these higher intensities. I also enjoyed the 4-stage process for teaching technical competency: Find Shape – Hold Shape – Repeat Movement – Progress.

Rich Clarke presented a practical around change of direction. A wonderful point by Rich is that we should show our athletes the positions we want them to hit in certain COD movements, and allow them to feel what these are before coaching them further or including movement/ transitions.

Favourite points from Jo Clubb involve how she described the difference between transplanting vs translating certain ideas/ practices to the context you are working in. When thinking about implementing new software or new monitoring practices, we must weigh the difference between precision and practicality.

Highlights from Jonas Dodoo’s practical around sprinting involve targeting a “bum before back” firing pattern. This involves coaching a proximal to distal sequencing pattern in sprinting (and most other movement). Can we get our athletes better at using their large hip extensor’s to initiate propulsion. Jonas then broke down sprinting into the 3 aspects we must focus on – Projection – Switching – Reactivity. Can we adequately project ourselves forward using a “bum before back” firing pattern. In switching, can we aggressively punch our leg down toward the ground, while whipping from the hip to drive our swing leg from behind us into a frontside position quickly that allows us time and space to attack the ground again. With reactivity, we are looking for system stiffness when we make contact with the ground so no energy leaks occur.

Rob Pacey gave a wonderful breakdown around the salary layout within the industry. A wonderful takeaway I got from this is to remain patient in the early years and seek as many different experiences as possible.

David Joyce began by presenting on the Cynefin Framework and how the majority of what we do lies in the complex area as we work with human beings. Here, things can only be understood in hindsight. We must constantly probe – sense – respond. In working in a complex environment, understanding what matters trumps a precise roadmap. We must cultivate a mindset of emergence and experimentation. We must run multiple safe to fail experiments throughout our life, be that with regards to networking or our work.

Christian Vallaso presented around critical power. This being the highest work rate that can be sustained without a progressive loss in homeostasis. A very interesting topic, and one that may enable us to make our conditioning and monitoring very individual specific.

Highlights from Ian McKeown’s presentation were working on how to make the organization you work for, or those you work with have your back with regards to your work/ what you implement. You must be confident in your system and as a result others will also be. A huge point was that it is integral to be consistent in your approach with how you interact with your athletes.

To conclude, Ian McKeown discussed that every single presentation throughout the day highlighted the need for consistent reflection to better ourselves and our practice.