I am pleased to announce that finally all my videos are available on iTunes podcast.

Click the VideoCast icon on the left to subscribe in iTunes. Use an ipod or iphone to view my video´s at training and with athletes that you coach. All my videos´s will be posted as updates so you won´t miss a thing. My lastest training methods, movement drills and plyometric activities will be available for free for you to use.

Nikolai – Winter 2009

Phase 1 – Strength & Conditioning
Week 1 – 5 Mon, Wed, Fri = 3 x week @ Sognsvann
Week 6 Rest

Warm up

Stretches 1 – 7 and dynamics

Skipping 2 mins (250 jumps)

Drills
5m ankle x3
5m ankle, 5m heel x3
5 m ankle, 5 m heel, 5 m knee x3
Total 90 m

Barbell Complex 20kg
Upright row 7
High pull snatch 7
Squat press 7
Good mornings 7
Bent over row 7
Dead lift 7
Bicepp Curl 7
Total 49

Clean 70% max (explosive power)
3 sets x 10 reps @ 40-45 kg
5 Tiggers + 90 sec rest between sets
Total = 30 reps + 30 contacts

Squat (Quads + Hams)
1 x 10 @ 20 kg – Front + Full
1 x 10 @ 40 kg – Front + Full
3 x 10 @ 80 kg – Back + 90´ + 8 Box Split Jumps
1 x 10 @ 40 kg – Front + Full
90 sec rest between sets
Total = 40 reps + 24 contacts

Calf Raises (Gastroc)
5 x 20 @ 40/60/80/60/40 kg
30 – 40 sec rest between sets
Total = 100 reps

M. Greene (Stimulus – Response)
3 x 5 @ 45 kg 1-5 sec hold + clap
5 x Box 2 Box + 90 sec rest between sets
Total = 15 reps + 15 contacts

Core Abs
90 Degrees 20 – 30 sec
Head raise 20 – 30 reps
60 Degrees 20 – 30 sec
Plank 20 – 30 sec
Rev. Plank 20 – 30 sec
Sides L + R 20 – 30 sec
Slow s leg 20 – 30 sec
Slow b leg 20 – 30 sec
Total 3,30 – 5,30 min
2-3 Sets + 2 min rest

Cool Down
3 x 30 m Tempo Sprint
Stretches 8 – 15
Skipping 2 mins (250 jumps)

Birmingham East & North PCT – NHS

Paul Kirby is 66 years old and lives in Acocks Green, Birmingham UK. Up to August of last year, he had always enjoyed good health. Then, with little warning, he became one of the 300,000 people in the UK who have a heart attack each year. Here, we tell Paul’s story.

On the morning of his heart attack, Paul experienced some discomfort in his chest. He put it down to indigestion. It came and went throughout the day. During the evening, Paul told his wife it was getting worse.

After contacting the GP out of hours emergency service, they were advised to go straight to Birmingham Heartlands Hospital, where Paul was monitored overnight. Having had blood tests and an electrocardiograph of his heart taken, Paul was seen on the ward by Dr Gordon Murray, a consultant cardiologist, who confirmed that Paul had suffered a heart attack and should be transferred to the hospital’s coronary care unit.

After a couple of days’ treatment and rest, Paul had a special x-ray taken of the blood vessels in and around his heart to help Dr Murray see whether any narrowing was restricting the blood flow.

Two of Paul’s vital coronary arteries were, indeed, narrower than they should have been. He was told he would need an operation (known as a coronary artery bypass graft) to deal with the problem.

This was arranged to take place at Walsgrave Hospital in Coventry, one of the main regional centres for open heart surgery. Fortunately, the surgery went well. Paul returned home five days later, where he was visited by a specialist nurse from Birmingham Heartlands Hospital’s Cardiac Rehabilitation Team, who stressed the importance of taking medication to keep his blood pressure down, eating healthily and taking regular exercise.

The nurse noticed that Paul was looking quite pale and arranged for him to have a blood test at his GP’s surgery, which confirmed that his iron levels were low – a problem quickly rectified by a short course of iron tablets.

Paul was also assessed as being suitable to take part in the community cardiac rehabilitation programme which, the evidence shows, speeds up patients’ recovery from heart surgery, builds up their confidence and helps prevent a further attack.

As Paul was to discover, the programme entailed structured physical activity led by a senior cardiac nurse and an exercise physiologist, as well as education sessions with a variety of healthcare professionals, including a stress adviser, a food health adviser, a pharmacist and a smoking cessation specialist.

Paul attended 16 sessions run by Eastern Birmingham Primary Care Trust at Fox Hollies Leisure Centre. These sessions are designed to improve the health of local people and promote lifelong independence. Now that he has completed the programme, Paul undergoes regular reviews with his own GP. He has also purchased exercise equipment so that he can continue with his physical activity plan at home.

Paul found that the programme increased his own confidence following the frightening episode of a heart attack. Whilst not someone who would normally join groups, he felt that exercising with other people had helped reassure him that he was not the only one going through this experience.

What Paul’s story also helps to show is just how many NHS professionals are involved in diagnosing and treating someone with a serious condition and supporting their recovery.

Primary care professionals and hospital specialists work closely together to ensure that people like Paul not only survive the trauma of a heart attack but go on to lead healthy lives.

And it’s not just the ‘hands on’ staff, such as doctors and nurses, who patients meet on the hospital ward or in their local surgery. There’s a vital support team behind them, such as the Cardiac Rehabilitation Team who makes sure that patients’ GPs have all the information they need to consolidate their recovery following surgery.

Said Paul: “The care I’ve received has been brilliant. I had never previously realised how much support I would continue to get from NHS staff after I left hospital. It’s really opened my eyes to what is available to patients like me.”

Paul’s story highlights how important it is for us all – not just heart attack patients – to eat a healthy, balanced diet and take exercise. Paul’s got the message.

www.Jumpmanual.com

This site provides great information about their jump training programme. I agree with their training techniques and  application, so go take a look for yourself, here are some comments about my site from Jacob at ‘The Jump Manual’ – thanks mate.

jacob@jumpmanual.com says…

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OK, so here is the lifting session I have been doing about twice a week for my legs and jumping power. I fit my training in between my personal training clients, so I do it fast with as little rest as I can cope with. The lifting I will complete with in about 40 min max. For warm-up I do 2000m rowing or 10 min X-trainer, also 1 min petella (knee cap) massage each leg. Due to my weight lifting shoes being lost in the post to Norway (very upset as they were signed by Steve Smith, UK high jump record holder), I only use regular trainers and no wrist straps. My goal is to clean 100+ kg before I am 30 yrs old at the end of August 2009. Then my session, at 75 kg body weight, is:

Barbell complex 20 kg 1 set of 10 reps
Over head full squat 20 kg 1 x 10

Clean:
60 kg 1 x 8
80 kg 1 x 4
85 kg 1 x 3
95 kg 1 x 2

Full Squat (fast acceleration all the way up)
40 kg 1 x 10
60 kg 1 x 10
80 kg 1 x 10

90º Squat
100 kg 1 x 10
120 kg 1 x 10

Full Squat Wide Stance (fast acceleration all the way up)
60 kg 1 x 10
40 kg 1 x 10

Calf Raises From Step (fast and full range – 30 sec rest)
60 kg 1 x 20
80 kg 1 x 20
100 kg 1 x 20
80 kg 1 x 20
60 kg 1 x 20

15 min X-Trainer + Physio Ball sit-ups 10 kg x 100 reps

High Jump – Drills

Some interesting drills for high jumpers. To see all the videos and contact the coach, go to:

http://www.youtube.com/user/jumpscoachk

2008 Olympics, Mens High Jump

Best of the best, with 2.42 attempt. Also a quick shot of my old coach Fuzz sporting fashionable facial hair….

Jesus has done a lot of biomechanical analysis in different areas. But his work on high jumping is of great interest too me. All of his presentations can be found HERE on his page at Indiana University

The presentations below clearly explain the underlying principles of the ‘Flop’ technique. This is a valuable resource for any coach or athlete eager to gain a deeper understanding of the event. With this understanding, your training and preparation can be improved. There are still many unknown factors in the high jump, but I would strongly recommend focusing your training on factors that have a solid base in reality and are backed up by research and rigorous logic. Not to do so is to presumably rely on miraculous intervention in order to jump high. I have never seen a miracle, but good luck too you if you have

Current high jumping technique (3.3 MB) <— This is a zipped collection of files

Historical evolution of high jumping technique (4.3 MB) <— This is a Powerpoint file

Some data from Jesus Depena’s 1995 report, combined with some of his data from women too, for you to look at below. This shows the relationship between the speed of approach runing and the vertical velolcity produced in the jump. The male jumps at the top end exceed 2.40 meters in the actual hight jumped. To simply calculate the speed of your approach, work out a measured run-up using my ‘RUN-UP CLACULATOR‘ that will give you the length of the curved part of the run. Then film some jumps and count the frames between the foot strike’s at the start of the curve and the take-off. This will give you a time in seconds relative to the filming speed, e.g 24 frames per second: 36 frames = 1.5 sec, on a 9m curve = 6m per sec runing speed. Over 4.2 m/s vertical velocity is required for top male high jumpers producing 1.20m + of vertical jump, this requies a run-up speed of around 7 – 8 m/s.

Jesus Depena is the God of high jump research. You can find his interests at:

http://www.indiana.edu/~sportbm/research.html

I highly recommend his 1995 paper for the USA Track and Field science project. It’s a cracking read!

Here are some videos from his site. These movies were obtained from a high-speed videotape taken during the 1988 International Golden High Jump Gala competition in Genk, Belgium by Dr. Bart Van Gheluwe. Depena was first made aware of this pronation problem after discussion with my old trainer Mike Dolby in the late 1980’s. After seeing the videos like these he went on to define the biomechanical problem and to describe the forces and movement angles involved in take-off. Thank you very much Jesus, you are a good man.