ASCA Podcast #101 - Glenn Stewart

Glenn Stewart is a physical and personal skills preparation specialist and manager. He has extensive experience as a S&C specialist and spent two decades developing Australia’s leading athletes and sporting teams professionals to international standards. He's a skilled researcher in physiology, biomechanics and team performance measurement. Glenn has published and presented in peer-reviewed journals and conferences. developing some of Australia’s leading athletes and sporting teams. With a key focus on winning, he offers his experience and knowledge as a leading voice in high performance sport to assist those seeking solutions and direction to improve on their sporting results. QUOTES “I see the role of the S&C coach and high performance manager to make recommendations to coaches about what would be ideal training loads and sessions… and at the end of the day, the coach is ultimately accountable on acting on those recommendations.” “When something is complex (like injury), you cannot apply rules, you can only apply guidelines” “My number one guideline to minimize risk of injury is to do high risk activities at low risk times and if you have a high risk time, choose low risk activities” “It’s not those events per se that are high risk (e.g., high speed running), its your preparedness for them that elevates the risk” “Injury minimisation is an understaning of your athlete and knowing that one extra rep could be the disaster you are trying to avoid whereas one less rep is not probably going to impact their performance down the track” “It is not always about injury risk minimization, we are in the world of high performance so we want our athletes to perform to the best of their abilities and they do that when they are injury free and have had massive training loads” SHOWNOTES 1) Glenn’s progression from PE teaching to the 20 plus years at the West Coast Eagles 2) The common mental model in sport that assigns blame to S&C staff for athlete injuries and the influence of sports coaches on injury 3) Factors leading to heightened injury risk in athletes and principles for dealing with complex scenarios 4) When load exceeds tissue threshold and what causes changes in tissue threshold 5) Managing training load and high risk times vs high risk activities 6) The concept of “great care with new” and applying progressive overload 7) How to determine how much training load is too much? 8) Glenn’s system of injury risk minimization and coach accountability 9) The latency period for injury after high risk periods 10) Monitoring and Glenn's preference for subjective measures 11) Chris Judd’s first day at the West Coast Eagles and witnessing greatness