Henk Kraaijenhof has been in the world of sports performance since 1975, and he is considered one of the world’s leading experts in the areas of speed and power development. Before he became an advisor to some of the world’s top athletes and teams, Henk was an accomplished coach in the sport of track and field. Coach Kraaijenhof specializes in the study and research of the effect/management of stress and fatigue on athletic performance. He is the founder and director of VortX, a company specializing in the evaluation, prevention, and treatment of mental and physical stress-related issues.
Kraaijenhof is a former track athlete from the Netherlands. He has coached world-class athletes from the Olympic to professional levels, including multiple World Champions and former world record holders in track and field. He has a wide variety of experience outside of track and field, including professional soccer, the NHL, Olympic field hockey, and Olympic volleyball. Coach Kraaijenhof currently works as a mentor for Olympic athletes and coaches in Holland.
Kraaijenhof converses on a wide variety of topics, from the use of plyometrics with 100m sprinters to an in-depth discussion of cueing athletes based on the athlete being left or right brain dominant. Henk gives his thoughts on coaching the mental aspect of athletic development.
In this podcast, Coach Henk Kraaijenhof discusses with Joel:
- Key performance indicators for maximum speed and endurance athletes.
- Why some athletes respond to specific types of cueing and others do not.
- Balancing athlete monitoring with traditional coaching intuition.
- How fast- and slow-twitch athletes should differentiate their training.
- The use of bounding to improve speed.
- Training various types of athletes from a mental perspective.
Henk’s blog can be found here.
Podcast total run time is 46:32.
Keywords: speed development, mental, cueing, monitoring
