Today’s guest is Bas Van Hooren, applied sport scientist and strength and conditioning specialist from the Netherlands. Bas has a wealth of knowledge on many facets of speed and sports performance, including muscle slack, muscle action, and biarticular muscle action, and how these concepts apply to training.

Bas Van Hooren is an athlete, applied sport scientist and strength and conditioning specialist from Gronsveld, The Netherlands. He is currently lecturing at Fontys University of Applied Sports Sciences. As an athlete, Bas has won multiple medals at the national championships, including a gold medal at the national championship 3000m indoor in 2017.

As an applied sport scientist, Bas has written multiple peer-reviewed scientific publications about a variety of sport science topics, and has a special interest in the transfer effects of training on sports performance and injury prevention.

It seems to happen regularly that we are reframing the context by which we are seeing and using traditional lifting with traditional up and down tempos. The more we know about the exact physiological and neurological mechanisms that drive movement, the more we can understand which aspects of lifting, plyometrics and special strength are helpful, and which might have a “reverse transfer”.

In my interview today with Bas, we go into detail on concepts of muscle slack, gearing, and phasic considerations, all with clear applications to how and what we are programming for our athlete populations.

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