A philosophical approach to aligning strength and conditioning support to a coaches' performance model: A case study from a national rowing performance programme

Abstract

Coaches within the same sport often have varying methods to achieve performance outcomes, and, therefore, it is crucial to understand their performance model to maximise the impact of strength and conditioning (S&C) support. Having a deliberate approach for understanding the demands of a sport from a sports coach's lens and aligning S&C support to the coaches' performance model rather than utilising a generic needs analysis to guide S&C support is vital to provide impactful S&C support. The multi-disciplinary team (MDT) may also play a pivotal role in providing insight into various aspects of performance beyond a generic needs analysis. It is to the S&C coaches' advantage to utilise the expertise of the MDT. Finally, the S&C coach must develop a technical framework that consists of avenues of impact or objectives for S&C support and demonstrates how biomotor qualities developed within the S&C programme may support determinants of performance and technical models for key sporting actions, in line with the coaches' performance principles. The current paper aims to utilise the authors' experience of working with the head coach of two national rowing performance programmes over the last three Olympic cycles, with specific reference to the preparation for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic games to articulate a philosophical approach for aligning S&C support to a coach's performance model.

Interdisciplinary Sport Science in Individual Sports - A Framework for Implementation

“…Compared with team sport environments, these environments are typically more insular and protective, with substantially greater screening of practitioners performed by the athlete and other support staff (11,20). Therefore, in the initial phase of the working relationship, the sport scientist needs to focus on building relationships and trust while acquiring initial knowledge about the sport (17). Consulting the athlete and coaches about the technical and tactical requirements of the sport, the culture of the sport, and the most time-sensitive or critical performance questions they would like information on, is an effective way to acquire this knowledge.…”

“…Establishing reference values from these sources is necessary for the initial phase of working with a sport. However, with greater experience in the sport and potentially assessing a large number of athletes from the sport, reference values can be amended based on the sport scientist's anecdotal evidence of what is required to optimize transference to technical and tactical performance (15,17).…”

“…The practitioner must determine how and why it happened” (5). For the sport scientist, this means that they must strive to have a holistic, integrated approach to data analysis, which creates meaningful and actionable connections between the subdisciplines rather than merely relaying the quantified data that has been collected (17). Interestingly, research that investigated coaches' perceptions of the knowledge and skills required by sport scientists suggested that they placed a high value on sport scientists demonstrating a greater knowledge of the technical and tactical aspects of the sport (27).…”