☕️ S&C Daily — Think When You're Tired

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Denver rookie running back Jonah Coleman spent the weeks between the draft and rookie minicamp in a small boxing gym in Chandler, Arizona. He boxed as a kid in Stockton, California, and went back to it for his first NFL offseason. The conditioning was the obvious part. The reason he gives is the other one.

"I got back into it because it really teaches you how to think when you’re tired and you’re exhausted," Coleman said. "The coach is throwing these combinations at you and you’ve got to remember it. If you don’t, you ultimately get hit, and I don’t want to get hit. That’s what it’s all about, training your mind to do things that show up in the fourth quarter." With both backs ahead of him hurt, he closed Sunday against Jacksonville with 33 rushing yards on six carries on the final drive and a three yard touchdown in the fourth quarter.

A systematic review in the Journal of Sports Sciences pooled 18 studies and 518 soccer players, all running the same drills with and without a coach calling out encouragement, to see what actually changes. The studies tracked internal load three ways, heart rate, blood lactate and rated perceived exertion, and it went up in 11 of the 13 that measured it, most often as small to moderate increases in heart rate and RPE. Physical output rose in 6 of 8, through more total distance and more high intensity running. Technical work improved in 8 of 9, either a higher success rate or more attempts.

What was tested was encouragement, not criticism, so the review says nothing about what happens when the message turns negative. The effect was most consistent in youth and amateur players and mixed in elite youth and professionals. And because nobody has standardized what counts as verbal encouragement, it cannot tell you how much to use or how often, only that the players who got it worked harder and did more.

The Seattle Kraken have built out their performance department. Nate Brookreson moves into a newly created director of sports performance role, Jake Jensen is promoted from assistant to head strength and conditioning coach, and Brandon Wickett joins as assistant after two seasons as head S&C for the AHL Firebirds and a year with the Flyers. Madison Yerigan arrives from Washington athletics as the club’s first full-time dietitian. When Brookreson and Jensen travel, Wickett stays in Seattle with the injured players and the prospects.

A new study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research put 24 youth soccer players, average age 16.5, through six weeks of assisted sprinting, towed behind a motorized device at speeds they could not reach on their own. Two groups ran 12 sessions of 30 meter sprints, one fully assisted and one partially. A third group trained as normal.

Their towed sprint times improved, 4.24 seconds down to 4.10. Their unassisted 30 meter times did not improve at all, and neither did the stride mechanics underneath them. Six weeks of being pulled made them faster at being pulled and left them where they started when they ran under their own power. The players who gained most on the towed runs were the ones who arrived with the most force and power already, and the authors flag how widely the response varied between individuals.

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