The recommended amount of sleep for young adults (18-25) is 7-9 hours, for older adults this figure drops slightly to 7-8 hours. These are the guidelines set by the US National Sleep Foundation. When compared against these sleep targets, research has shown that elite athletes obtain less sleep or the minimum amount of sleep that…
For the unacclimated endurance athlete heat can be a massive hindrance. During exercise in the heat our performance decreases with the increase in our body temperature! There are numerous ways to help limit this performance decrease such as training in a heat chamber, training outdoors in hot climates, hot water immersion, sauna usage and interestingly,…
“Serious athletes come in two varieties: those who have been injured, and those who have not been injured yet” (Brown, 2005) While this is probably a very grim way to start this post, it is unfortunately fairly close to the truth. As Jamie was describing in this blog post, cycling crashes happen all the time…
As a coach the biggest question I’m often asked is “how do I compare to….” or “what step up in power do I need to make to get to…”. Quite often athletes are very protective of their data and think giving anything away also gives away their competitive edge, leading to inflated or deflated numbers…
Sport Psychology Placement Students This is the first piece of work by our placement students from the University of Stirling’s MSc in Sports Psychology Hanna Glandorf & Dipam Sharma. Lots of content and helpful workshops to come, really looking forward to highlighting an area we have only briefly touched on since the beginning of PE.…
“It is the Athletes’ personal duty to ensure that no Prohibited Substance enters their bodies. Athletes are responsible for any Prohibited Substance or its Metabolites or Markers found to be present in their Samples.” – WADA Code. it is estimated that up to 9% of all the positive doping tests nowadays are caused by elite…
Decreased costs of genetic sequencing has resulted in companies selling genetic information direct to customers (DTC) (Harris, Kelly, & Wyatt, 2013). DTC testing markets itself with a variety of services namely, ancestry testing, health testing and carrier testing (Phillips, 2016), in certain cases DTC genetic testing claims to test for the creative, musical, linguistic, and…
In cycling, crashes are an inevitable part of the sport. Ride your bike for long enough and at some point you’re going to fall off either from pushing the limits of tyre grip, a mechanical failure or something completely outside of your control. A study by Eley et al. (2019) which aimed to characterize…
So, the last race of the year is under our belts – there’s nothing more on the horizon and motivation is starting to waver! It’s been a tough year. For athletes we coach we always recommend a 2-4 week off season period to decompress after a year of training from both a physical and psychological…
I’m sitting on the couch in the middle of the day, a weekday, I should be working – I’m not. The Tour de France is on the TV. We have Irish and local interest this year, in a major way. Sam Bennet is fighting for stage wins and the Green Jersey. He’s been knocking on…