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, Keirs 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.com, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more.

View more show notes at Just-fly-sports.com/podcast-125-keir-wenham-flatt