Today’s episode features Keir Wenham-Flatt, physical preparation coach and founder of rugbystrengthcoach.com. Keir is currently a strength and conditioning specialist at the College of William and Mary who has worked with professional teams on 4 different continents. He is particularly well versed in physical preparation for rugby, but has experience with training in many different sports and schools of movement.
Keir is brilliant with the dynamics of team and field sport training, and getting training to be maximally effective within the confines of the game. A theme of this podcast is finding transfer to sport in training, and not just leaving a season at “I got the athlete stronger” so I did my job. With all the motor learning theory and ideas on training coordination specific to sport play, there is so much to learn and implement in this realm.
In today’s episode, Keir talks about the essentials of speed building, conditioning and mental toughness as it relates to team sport play, which is a totally different ballgame (literally) than running a 40 yard dash or the 200m in track. As coaches, we are always searching for ways to make our training more effective and this episode with Keir delivers on many levels. Keir also gives his take on the health/performance spectrum in working with team sport athletes, as well as his use of grappling in training collision sport athletes.
For those track coaches out there, even if you don’t work with team sport athletes, Keir’s take on “stress inoculation” of timed sprints for team sport athletes, including “speed gate golf” which bears some similarity to doing variable jumps that I’ve talked about in the past, is something I’m sure you’ll find fascinating.
Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more.
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Key Points:
- Keir’s idea on “coordination” training for field sports
- How to go about approaching speed and movement in light of the principles of coordination and being robust
- Using sport specific external stimuli in the speed and movement preparation of team sport athletes
- Keir’s use of grappling to train athletes in contact or collision sports
- Facets of measuring linear velocity in team sport athletes and how it is different than game speed
- “Stress Inoculation” of linear speed work for team sport players
- What mental toughness really is and how to train it
- Keir’s take on the health versus performance spectrum in sport performance as well as Keir’s take on utilizing Mladen Jovanovic’s agile periodization system
Keir Wenham-Flatt Quotes
“Things which are anti-fragile thrive in unpredictable environments… if you think about all the variables in the team based sports, they are highly volatile”
“Extreme specialization is the enemy of robustness”
“The four phases for us are: closed environment attractors, then we go into more of an open environment with variable conditions, flucutators. Then we put them in strict drills where we are shaping the task where without knowing it you need to demonstrate the behavior I want to see and solve a problem, then lastly we are going to put you in a highly contextual environment, a team environment when you have to execute in the conditions of the game”
“If you don’t consider the variables of team strategy, your training is general specific at best (3rd tier of the Bondarchuk System!)”
“(Regarding sprint and movement drills) There has to be risk, there has to be relevance, there has to be a challenge in order to grab your attention. If there is no learning there is no adaptation”
“(Regarding sprint and movement drills) For me, I change surfaces, I change body positions, I change start positions, I will change center of gravity”
“You are never going to be running in a perfect straight line in a closed environment in team sports, and it’s all about how to preserve your speed in those conditions”
“If we are competing and I can close my (feedback to game stimuli) loop faster, you have to reset yours”
“The key difference with game speed lies in the ability to perceive the environment, derive meaning, select an action and then execute it”
“The best guys are Ph.D’s in their sport (versus weight room proficient)”
“In rugby you get most tired fighting with other people, and sprinting (hence the use of grappling in training)”
“If you want to see Rugby athletes run slower, put them through timing gates (they are not used to it/robust to it)”
“Mental toughness is simply being able to stay calm and execute under high levels of stress”
“I repeat the same session in terms of rep schemes and exercises once every 6 months, and I seem to be responding to it quite well”
About Keir Wenham-Flatt
Keir Wenham-Flatt is a strength and conditioning specialist at the College of William and Mary who has worked with professional teams on 4 different continents. Keir is particularly well versed in physical preparation for rugby, as he is the founder of rugbystrengthcoach.com, the web’s leading provider of rugby strength and conditioning information, discussion and online coaching
Keir worked with the field hockey and tennis programs while assisting with the football team at the University of Richmond in 2018-19.
Wenham-Flatt joins Richmond after spending two years as the head of strength and conditioning for the Toshiba Brave Lupus Rugby team in the Japan Top League.
Wenham-Flatt also spent three years as the lead strength and conditioning coach at Union Argentina de Rugby. He helped the program to a third-place finish at the Southern Hemisphere Rugby Championship and a fourth place showing at the Rugby World Cup in 2015.
Wenham-Flatt spent one year as the head of strength, speed and power for the Sydney Roosters while also having stints with the Rotterham Titans and the London Wasps.
Wenham-Flatt earned his Bachelor of Science in sport science from the University of Leeds in 2008. He earned his Master of Science in strength and conditioning from the University of Bolton in 2012.
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