Standardising the Strength and Conditioning World

I had been and a Strength and Conditioning coach for many years before our children came along. I had the incredible honour to have worked with some truly world class athletes and world class people. Sean Boylan, Anthony Tohill, Eoin Liston, Shay Kelly, Brian O'Driscoll, Bernard Dunne, David Batty, David Roecastle (RIP), Stephen Cluxton, Paul Sculthorpe, Steve Prescott(RIP), Tommy Martyn, Chris Joynt, Dave Watson, Wayne Rooney, Dan Baker, David Boyle, Mick Clegg, Ashley Jones, Aidan O'Rourke, Kieran Mcgeeney, Ciaran Donaghy, Barrie Mcdermott, Terry O'Connor, Brian Carney, Steve O'Neill, Stevie McDonnell, Sean Og De Paor, Warren Joyce, Teddy Sheringham, Dan Carter, Marty Holah, Shane Williams, Filo Tia Tia, Ryan Jones, Adam Jones, Sonny Parker, Sean Long, Kieran Cunningham, Paul Wellens, Paul O'Connell, Ronan O'Gara, Tommy Bowe, the list goes on and on.

I naively assumed that anyone training (from a strength and conditioning perspective) any type of athlete at any age is knowledgeable, clued in, a practitoioner, passionate, honest and totally invested in their duty of care to train whoever, in a safe, progressive, smart and individualised way.

BOOM wake up call, the more I became a parent, child 1 2 and then 3

I started to discover the total disregard to any standardisation of physical activity delivery at any level in Ireland and many other countries.

I am very much of the mindset give me a solution rather than a problem, and I had been complaining, too much, about the ineptitude of this problem which is endemic in our sports.

But luckily I had an opportunity to act upon this problem by reaching out to my long time colleagues at the Australian Strength and Conditioning Association (ASCA ).

I had long time been a member of ASCA, and had spoken at a couple at their conferences, great people, great mindset and attitude, great perspective on how S+C should be conducted in schools, clubs, athletes, and teams. I had also finally met people with a similar outlook on the importance of S+C; Peter and Susan Currell, John Mitchell, Julian Jones all way ahead of their time and ahead of the world. They could smell the importance properly qualified (not a weekend warrior course) S+C coaches.

To cut to the chase, if you are serious about your kids development, if you are serious about developing the kids in your club, team or organisation, just make sure whoever is prescribing the training in FIT FOT PURPOSE.

If not ASCA run a brilliant level 1 in S+C.

Please get in touch and we can hopefully guide you.