This week’s podcast guest is Angus Ross. Angus is a former Winter Olympian employed by High Performance Sport New Zealand. He works with track and field and several other Olympic sports, including sprint cycling, skeleton, squash, rowing, tennis, and more. Angus has a PhD in exercise physiology from the University of Queensland and has been a multi-time guest on the podcast. He is an absolute wealth of knowledge on all things speed, power, and human performance.

There is a lot that the world of sport can learn from track and field, but perhaps the most valuable lessons can be gained by studying the decathlon and heptathlon events. Most sports performance programs will jump, sprint, and throw, but the focused, competitive aspects of those events bring out the highest level of expression for pure outputs, along with the speed-endurance aspects.

In today’s podcast, Angus discusses the relationship between the multi-events and the needs of team sports, including the dynamics of creating scoring tables in a performance program and the connective tissue development multi-event training brings about. He discusses the relationship between speedbag training and sprinting. He also gets into isometrics and elasticity, as well as plenty of case studies and examples of putting these principles into action. I always have fantastic conversations with Angus; this talk was no exception.

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View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage.

Angus Ross Main Points
3:00- Comparing “Rotational” and “Linear” Events in Track and Field
11:20- Loaded Mobility for Athletic Performance Enhancement
18:24- Enhancing Connective Tissue Quality Through Loaded Stretching
31:45- Heptathlon Training Impact on High Jump Success
35:28- Rotational Movements in Multiplanar Athletic Training
43:03- Elasticity's Role in Athletic Performance
46:26- The Role of Elasticity in Athletic Performance
54:53- Enhanced Athletic Performance through Speedball Training
58:19- Spinal Engine's Role in Speed Enhancement
1:06:03- Enhanced Performance Through Muscle Control Adaptations
1:09:23- The Role of Long Isometrics and the Nervous System
1:11:49- Enhancing Physical Strength Through Structured Workouts

Angus Ross Quotes
"I just think it's interesting how these different qualities degrade at different rates. And in terms of trying to maintain your athleticism, probably that elasticity, ability to bounce is probably something that we should be thinking about." - Angus Ross"

“I talked at a high jump mini conference we had in New Zealand a little while ago. Made the analogy that it's really interesting, too, that the high jump + heptathlon is a really good combination. There's a lot of world class heptathlon athletes (who are really good at high jump).

"With the decathlon. I kind of have this idea in my head, like the decathlon principle, in the sense of what could be applied for any event. Like almost this catalog of same but different skills to be good at if you want to be good at one thing." - Joel Smith"

“But in contrast, volume of work probably is really good for your connective tissue and your fascial stuff and your tendons. And so perhaps the multi event is. And this is one of the things I was writing a couple of notes when you had some of those ideas to talk about. It's fascinating to me that we have now, we've got decathletes on the scene that can run 10...