Athletic Profiling
Become the Athlete You Were Born to Be
Your potential is untapped. Your limits can be stretched. Partner with us and redefine what you’re capable of.
Let’s embark on this journey together.
The Ultimate Edge for Elite Athletes
In the realm of combat and contact sports, victory isn’t just about technique – it’s about strength, endurance, and the precision of every movement. I can empower athletes to realize their maximum potential, ensuring every punch, tackle, or grapple is executed with unmatched power and efficiency.
Once we have finished the call what happens next?
We start the process using my tried and tested 5-step athletic profiling:
1. Onboard Questionnaire
Purpose
Our Onboarding Questionnaire isn’t just a routine form; it’s the first step in creating a truly personalized training regimen. By understanding the intricacies of your lifestyle, nutritional habits, past injuries, and current training schedule, we’re able to design a program that respects and enhances your unique physiology and goals. Here’s what it encompasses:
Training Schedule
- What We Gather: Information about your current training routine, frequency, intensity, and types of exercises.
- Why It Matters: This provides insight into your current physical workload and helps us identify areas of strength and where improvement is needed. For combat and contact sports athletes, understanding the existing regimen ensures that our program complements, rather than conflicts with, sport-specific training.
Nutritional Information
- What We Gather: Details on your typical daily meals, supplementation, hydration, and any dietary restrictions.
- Why It Matters: Nutrition fuels performance. By analyzing your nutritional intake, we can make recommendations to enhance energy, recovery, and overall athletic output. Especially in sports demanding peak physical performance, the right nutrition can be the difference between winning and losing.
Injury History
- What We Gather: Past and present injuries, their causes, recovery processes, and any residual complications or restrictions.
- Why It Matters: A past injury can greatly influence training protocols. It’s crucial to understand these histories to prevent re-injury and ensure that training methods promote healing and strength. For contact and combat athletes, where injuries might be frequent, this insight guides safer and more efficient training.
Lifestyle Choices and Habits
- What We Gather: Information about sleep patterns, alcohol consumption, recreational drug use, stress levels, and other lifestyle choices.
- Why It Matters: Lifestyle directly impacts performance, recovery, and overall health. For instance, an athlete’s sleep pattern can affect their recovery and energy levels. Recognizing and addressing detrimental habits can elevate an athlete’s game and ensure they’re performing at their best, both mentally and physically.
Applying the Insights to Combat and Contact Sport Athletes
Combat and contact sports demand agility, strength, quick reflexes, and endurance. By gaining a 360-degree view of an athlete’s life through the Onboarding Questionnaire, we can:
- Design Efficient Training Cycles: Aligning them with existing schedules and ensuring optimal workload distribution for enhanced performance.
- Prescribe Sport-Specific Nutrition: Ensuring athletes get the right fuel to excel in their sports, recover efficiently, and maintain optimal body composition.
- Develop Injury-Preventive Exercises: Tailoring routines to strengthen vulnerable areas, thus reducing the risk of common injuries specific to their sport.
- Recommend Lifestyle Adjustments: Offering guidance on sleep, recovery techniques, and habits to maximize their training outcomes and competition performance.
Your path to becoming a formidable athlete in combat and contact sports starts with understanding every facet of your physical being. Our Onboarding Questionnaire is your first step in this transformative journey.
2. Neurotransmitter Dominance Test
What is it?
At its core, neurotransmitters are the body’s “chemical messengers.” They help transmit signals in the brain and throughout the body, playing key roles in regulating mood, energy levels, focus, and even muscle contractions. Every individual tends to have dominance or a higher activity of one or a few neurotransmitters, which can influence their behavior, mood, and even how they respond to training.
The Primary Neurotransmitters:
- Dopamine: Often referred to as the “reward” neurotransmitter. Dominance in this can lead to increased motivation, alertness, concentration, and motor control. However, it can also make individuals more prone to burnout if they don’t manage their training loads.
- Acetylcholine: This neurotransmitter plays a pivotal role in muscle contraction and motor control. Those with acetylcholine dominance might exhibit quick motor reactions and may excel in sports that require rapid, precise movements.
- Serotonin: It’s known for regulating mood, appetite, and sleep. Dominance in serotonin might lead to a calm demeanour, making such individuals better suited for endurance activities or sports that require sustained focus.
- GABA (Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid): This inhibitory neurotransmitter is crucial for calming nervous activity. Those dominant in GABA might be more relaxed and could benefit from training that focuses on mindfulness and recovery.
Personalized Training Regimens: Based on neurotransmitter dominance, training can be tailored to leverage an athlete’s natural strengths. For instance, a dopamine-dominant individual might benefit from high-intensity, varied workouts that cater to their need for novelty and reward.
Nutritional Adjustments: Certain foods and supplements can influence neurotransmitter activity. Understanding dominance can help in making dietary recommendations to optimize neurotransmitter function.
Recovery Protocols: Dopamine-dominant athletes might push themselves hard and often, making them more prone to overtraining. Recognizing this can allow for the incorporation of more frequent and strategic recovery sessions.
Mental Coaching: Knowing an athlete’s neurotransmitter profile can aid in crafting psychological strategies for motivation, focus, and stress management.
Benefits of the Test:
- Optimized Performance: Tailoring training based on neurochemistry can lead to quicker gains and improved performance.
- Injury Prevention: Understanding one’s dominance can help in recognizing signs of overtraining or burnout, reducing the risk of injury.
- Holistic Development: It’s not just about physical prowess; understanding neurochemistry can aid in the mental and emotional development of an athlete.
In summary, while the neurotransmitter dominance test is just one tool in a coach’s arsenal, it offers a unique perspective on how an athlete’s brain functions and how that can be harnessed for superior performance. However, it’s essential to remember that humans are complex, and relying solely on this test without considering other physiological, psychological, and situational factors might not yield comprehensive results.
3. Movement and Joint Capacity Testing
Understanding the Movement and Joint Capacity Test
Functional Movement Screen (FMS) Variation:
- What It Is: The FMS is a battery of seven tests that assesses the quality of fundamental movement patterns in individuals without any known musculoskeletal pain or pathology. Each test has a specific criterion to grade movement patterns, and the scores can identify limitations or asymmetries.
- Relevance to Combat and Contact Sports: Athletes in these sports often employ a variety of movements – from powerful punches and kicks to rapid direction changes and high-impact tackles. The FMS helps in pinpointing any inefficiencies, imbalances, or weaknesses in these movements. By rectifying these, athletes can optimize their performance, reduce the risk of injury, and ensure that every motion is precise and powerful.
Controlled Articular Rotations (CAR) Tests:
- What It Is: CAR tests evaluate the range and quality of motion across specific joints by having individuals move their joints in maximal controlled circles. It’s an excellent tool to gauge joint health, mobility, and articulation.
- Relevance to Combat and Contact Sports: Joints undergo immense stress in combat and contact sports. Whether it’s the rotational force of a kick, the jarring stop after a sprint, or the impact from a tackle, athletes’ joints must be in prime condition. CAR tests allow coaches to identify any joint restrictions or potential vulnerabilities, facilitating targeted training to fortify these essential anatomical structures.
More Than Just A Test: Everyday Movement as a Crucial Gauge
While standardized tests like the FMS and CAR are invaluable in creating an athlete’s profile, the truest measure of an athlete’s movement capabilities lies in their daily routines and diverse scenarios they face. The way an athlete dodges an opponent, the fluidity in their sprint, or even how they recover from a fall provides nuanced insights that standardized tests might miss.
For combat and contact sport athletes, these daily movements are their language, their tools of trade. Thus, observing these motions offers a comprehensive view of their strengths, vulnerabilities, and potential areas of improvement.
Creating the Complete Athletic Profile
By combining insights from the FMS and CAR tests with observations of everyday movements, we craft a holistic athletic profile. This profile isn’t just a snapshot; it’s a dynamic blueprint that evolves as the athlete grows.
With this profile, targeted interventions – whether they’re corrective exercises, mobility routines, or strength training protocols – can be designed. For combat and contact sport athletes, this means enhanced performance, reduced injury risk, and a longer, more successful athletic career.
In essence, by comprehending both the subtle nuances of everyday movements and the detailed insights from standardized tests, we bridge the gap between raw talent and peak performance.
4. Physiological and Physical Testing
Physiological & Physical Testing: Mastering Your Athletic Blueprint
In the competitive domain of combat and contact sports, understanding the nuances of your body can be the deciding factor between victory and defeat. By tapping into advanced physiological and physical tests, we gather critical data that illuminates your unique athletic profile. Let’s delve deeper.
1. Max Heart Rate (MHR) Testing
- What is it?
MHR represents the maximum number of heart beats per minute when you’re exerting yourself to your fullest. - What We Gather:
By determining your MHR, we understand the upper limit of your cardiovascular system’s capacity.
Application to Combat & Contact Sports:
- Pace Regulation: Helps athletes gauge how intensely they should spar or compete without gassing out prematurely.
- Training Zones: By knowing the MHR, specific heart rate zones can be established to tailor cardiovascular workouts efficiently.
2. Lactate Threshold (LT) Testing
What is it?
This determines the intensity of exercise at which lactate (a byproduct of glucose metabolism) starts to accumulate in the bloodstream faster than it can be removed.
What We Gather:
- The specific exercise intensity where your performance begins to decline due to lactate buildup.
- The point at which anaerobic metabolism becomes predominant in energy production.
Application to Combat & Contact Sports:
- Endurance Enhancement: Training just below the LT can increase the threshold, allowing athletes to maintain high-intensity performance for longer periods.
- Performance Predictability: An athlete can learn how to pace themselves during a match, recognizing when they’re nearing their LT to avoid rapid fatigue.
3. VO2 Max Testing
What is it?
VO2 Max indicates the maximum amount of oxygen your body can utilize during intense exercise—a solid measure of aerobic fitness.
What We Gather:
- Insight into your cardiovascular fitness level and aerobic performance capacity.
- The efficiency with which your muscles can use oxygen to produce energy.
Application to Combat & Contact Sports:
- Stamina Insights: Athletes with a higher VO2 Max can sustain high-intensity activities longer, crucial for sports where matches might extend for prolonged periods.
- Training Efficiency: By enhancing VO2 Max through specific aerobic exercises, athletes can significantly improve their overall performance and recovery rates.
In the Context of Combat and Contact Sports:
Understanding and optimizing these parameters is pivotal. In the heat of a match or fight, the ability to exert maximum effort, sustain high intensity for extended periods, and recover rapidly can mean the difference between victory and defeat. By meticulously analysing the data from these tests:
- We can create highly individualized training programs that not only enhance these metrics but translate to tangible performance improvements in the ring, on the mat, or on the field.
- Athletes can strategize their moves, understanding when to go full throttle and when to conserve energy for critical moments.
Your body is your most potent weapon. Equip it with the knowledge and training it deserves.
5. Programme Development/Monitoring
Tailoring Your Ultimate Athletic Blueprint: Precision, Personalization, and Performance
Harnessing the power of physiological and physical testing, along with other critical inputs, our coaching philosophy doesn’t believe in a one-size-fits-all approach. Here’s how we translate intricate data into a sports-specific, individualized training program and deliver it seamlessly through our cutting-edge coaching platform.
1. Personalized Assessment Synthesis:
Upon gathering critical data points like Max Heart Rate, Lactate Threshold, VO2 Max, and additional metrics from your detailed onboarding questionnaire, we create a 360-degree view of your athletic profile. This includes not just where you currently stand, but also where you aim to reach, taking into account your unique strengths, areas of improvement, and specific goals related to your combat or contact sport.
2. Craftsmanship of Your Programme:
Harnessing this rich data, we craft a programme that:
- Optimizes Training Intensity: By understanding your MHR and Lactate Threshold, we ensure you’re training at zones that maximize performance without overtraining.
- Enhances Aerobic Capacity: Based on your VO2 Max, aerobic workouts are designed to bolster your stamina, essential for prolonged bouts or matches.
- Integrates Sport-Specific Drills: We incorporate exercises and routines that mirror the demands of your sport, ensuring training relevance and efficacy.
- Balances Recovery & Exertion: Leveraging insights on your physiological responses, we ensure optimal recovery periods, essential for muscle growth and injury prevention.
3. Seamless Integration with Our Coaching Platform:
Once your personalized program is ready, it’s instantly uploaded to our dynamic coaching platform.
- Instant Access: The moment it’s uploaded, you’ll receive a notification, granting you immediate access to your bespoke training plan.
- Comprehensive Metrics Storage: Our platform isn’t just a training guide. It’s a digital repository of all your testing metrics, tracking your journey and highlighting your evolution as an athlete.
- Daily Guidance: Every day, clear instructions await, detailing exercises, durations, and intensities. You’re never left wondering what to do — it’s all laid out, step by step.
4. Detailed Guidance & Tutorial Support:
For our online warriors, each exercise comes with a video tutorial. These aren’t generic clips, but detailed demonstrations ensuring form precision, maximizing benefits, and minimizing injury risks.
For those opting for in-person coaching, our platform acts as a dynamic partner. As you’re walked through your program, real-time adjustments can be made, instantly reflecting in your digital regimen.
5. Dynamic Adjustments & Feedback Loop:
The beauty of our platform is its dynamism. As you progress, feedback can be inputted, and changes made in real-time. If an exercise feels too challenging or perhaps not challenging enough, it can be adjusted to ensure you’re always operating at your peak potential.
Why Choose me as your strength specialist?
- Bespoke Expertise: Every athlete is unique, and so is our approach. Benefit from a program tailored just for you.
- Scientific Edge: We merge traditional training wisdom with cutting-edge science, giving you the unparalleled advantage.
- Success Stories: Our athletes don’t just meet their goals; they surpass them. But don’t take our word for it – [link to testimonials].
Become the Athlete You Were Born to Be
Your potential is untapped. Your limits can be stretched. Partner with us and redefine what you’re capable of.
Let’s embark on this journey together.