Sports science consultant John T. Weatherly talks to Dr. Fergus Connolly, the performance director for Michigan Football, about a broad range of coaching and sports science topics. This includes the key principles of all sports cultures, the illusion of data collection, the concept of periodization, and the future of team performance staff.

This article includes Randy Huntington’s Excel spreadsheet to calculate relay exchange marks.

Both genetic and adaptive factors affect an athlete’s efficiency. This article breaks each phase of a distant runner’s performance into its biomechanical components, looking at common errors that affect the athlete’s form. The goal is a better understanding of what it takes to improve running economy to minimize energy expenditure over long distances.

To create stronger vertical jumping technique, coaches can introduce a level of chaos, or room for the CNS to self-organize movement, to ensure that an athlete’s motor pattern is continually fresh and improving. Four ways to induce specific power variability into jump training are complex training, fatigue induced learning, applying the Same but Different concept, and induced randomness.

Have you thought about using in-season football training to get ready for track season? From a track coach’s perspective, it can be useful to develop some work in the “pre-season,” so you can spend more time running during the season.

Is elite sport, and the athletes who participate in it, “healthy”? Coach Craig Pickering explores this question by focusing first on the definitions of “health” and “elite athlete,” and then considering the physical, mental, and social aspects of health.

The key to harnessing an athlete’s power potential is optimizing gut health. By increasing the quality and diversity of gut microbiota, we can increase the power of overall health. This power output propels an athlete to the top of the game via stronger immunity, lower inflammation, enhanced nutrient metabolism, and resilient brain function and behavior.

Good mechanics, not gimmicks, enable your long jumpers and triple jumpers to reach their potential. Begin with the proper stance, move through the drive and continuation phases, and ensure they start their run in the best possible spot. That provides the most momentum and takeoff as near as possible to the pit.

The number one priority of jump training is for the athlete to learn to produce more force in less time, and put that force in the right place. Nothing is better suited to this task than a proper selection of plyometric exercises.