Myles Stringer - Strength Coach

I’m an ex- Rugby player (although I still get roped in from time to time) as well as a casual cricketer.

I’m currently studying my Masters in Strength and Conditioning at St. Marys University, Twickenham, with the aim of completing this in 2018.

 

I love sports! Ever since I can remember I have been sport mad. I’ve always wanted to be involved in playing or watching some kind of sports, it doesn’t really matter what it is. But also from a very young age, I was always interested in why some people were better than others, or stronger than others. I obviously understood that some people were born with great skills and part of a good gene pool, but there had to be other reasons as to why the players I admired watching were that much better than everyone else. From the age of 14 I was obsessed with working out, and finding new ways to try to ‘get massive’ – it didn’t work, but I was obsessed, and I suppose my passion grew from there.

 

My career at the moment finds me as the Strength and Conditioning Coach in a London Private School. Here I work with many different athletes across 5 core sports: Rugby, Hockey, Netball, Fencing and Cricket. Each sport is so different and the energy systems and strength needs are very conflicting, but it’s fantastic to work with some brilliant athletes who improve day in, day out.

 

My philosophy has come about through my own experiences in both failing and succeeding. I still think it is evolving, but it’s close to what I believe is true. I’ve failed a lot as an athlete, but I also believe that has made me evolve as a strength and conditioning coach. I’ve never been the biggest, strongest or quickest, but I’ve always worked hard to be counted as one of the top in any team I played in, and found it an insult on my character if someone believed that either I wasn’t or that I didn’t try hard enough to be. The basis of my philosophy is this:

 

Speed is the determining factor in many sports. The objective of many sports is to be able to run faster, jump higher, hit harder. Maximal speed underpins this. I want to maximise the intensity of movements as well as increase the repeatability and efficiency of sports skills and movements.

 

Through my relatively short time trying to learn about strength and conditioning (S&C), I have read many articles and been lucky to work with a few very good coaches, 2 of these coaches have had lasting impacts on my life and career as an S&C coach. The first is Margot Wells who I met when I was 20 years old, the renowned Sprint coach who helped coach her husband to 100m Gold in 1980, and the second is Keir Wenham-Flatt who I first met when he was leading the academy S&C at London Wasps, since then he has worked in Sydney with Sydney Roosters, been the Head S&C coach for Argentina during their World Cup campaign, and now works in Japan with Toshiba Fuchu Rugby.

 

Margot taught me that speed the most admirable attribute in sport – “you can’t tackle what you can’t catch”, her passion and knowledge of speed is incredible and this rubbed off on me. She’s the one who lead me down the road of S&C and sports development. Without her I’d have probably tried to hold on to a quickly fading dream of becoming a professional rugby player. It’s not that she didn’t believe in me, because I was playing a good level of rugby at the time, but she saw something in me that encouraged her to mentor me within speed training and sports conditioning.

 

Keir intrigued me from the moment I met him. His knowledge and hard work is undeniable. He, like I, underpins speed of movement as the most important strength within rugby. Being able to run, jump, push, pull, step, and stop quicker than anyone else on the field is highly advantageous. The best in world sport are the best because of their skill levels and work ethic, but most are also faster, and more efficient at what they do also. I still follow all the Keir does as he is going in the same direction I would like to, although he is far further down the road than I am… One day, I might catch him.

 

My Basic Philosophy of training:

 

General Physical Preparation (GPP)

This is the first stage for all athletes, no matter of age. This is your basic movement mechanics, general gym based hypertrophy and strength, medicine ball and lots of rehab and prehab movements and exercises. In this stage I regularly use the idea that in order to be successful you must be able to Push, Pull and Squat effectively, as well as add accessory movements and exercises to strengthen around those areas. All athletes will learn how to perform the basic gym exercises under control. The focus in this stage is to increase the eccentric load; this ideally decreases the chance of injuries, as our bodies are stronger eccentrically.

 

Rehab and Prehab plays a huge part in this initial phase where every exercise is supersetted with at least 1 accessory exercise that focus’ on either isometric stability or movement of joints under tension. These are focused on joints or muscles that have tendencies to be injured within the sports that they play. I.e. for Netball I make sure there is a lot of landing mechanics, starting from standing to landing off a box, as well as VMO development, hamstring control and Pelvo-Lumbar strength. For rugby there is a huge amount of training focused of shoulder stability and strength, hamstring and posterior chain capacity as well as neck development.

 

Mechanics wise, it is important in this stage to start to learn basic movements. This starts with low-level closed skill and progresses on once the athlete has mastered the movement. I.e. for running we do wall drills to focus on shin angles, knee drive, body angle and hip extension. We also work on trunk stability drills and as mentioned previously landing mechanics from bilateral to unilateral.

 

Specialized Development Preparation

No I look at the Dynamic Correspondence of the sport in which they play. We increase the intensity of exercises and develop the movement characteristics. Essentially I want the athlete to be moving more fluidly out of the weights room, and be increasing the intent with which they lift weights inside the gym. The accessory exercises never leave, but will become more advanced, lots of anti rotation exercises as well as movement and stabilization added in as well.  

 

I still want the athlete controlling the weight as much as possible, but with variations added in. More jumping, landing and throwing is included as well as exercises to enhance triple extension and posterior chain strength.

Outside, now that they have a basic understanding of movement patterns, I start to look at some more open skilled activities, but pre determined rather than reactionary. It’s still important to perfect the movement first. They must be able to execute the skill effortlessly with maximal efficiency and at high speed before we can move on.

 

Sport Specific Preparation

This is now the level in which weight training becomes far more specific to the sport, position, and athlete then ever before. By now we should be advanced in our lifts and running and its time to ramp it up. I’ll now start to look deeper into training zones and % of lifts. Movements on the field will become more decision based to replicate sports. It is now at the stage where their sport and specific position play a role in how we structure their training.

​

I like to look at what I do as giving my athletes the tools they need in order to solve problems they will encounter in sport. It’s no good if I’m standing there shouting instructions on how to move, run, jump, because I can’t do that in a game. Through this development I hope that by the end my athletes can run better, jump higher, lift more, work for longer – and if they do make a mistake, can figure out why and fix it.

 

 

Reference List:

 

Bondarchuk, A. (1986). Periodization of sports training. Legkaka Atletika , 12, 8-9.

 

Davidson, Anna; Trewartha, Grant. (2008). Understanding the physiological demands of Netball: a time-motion investigation. International Journal of Performance Analysis in Sport. 8 (3), 1-17

 

Giles, K. (2014). An introduction to athlete development. Movement Dynamids UK Ltd.

 

Giles, K. B. (2011). Injury resilience - let's control what can be controlled. British Journal of Sports Medicine , 45 (9), 684-685.

 

Issurin, V. (2008). Block periodization versus traditional training theory: a reveiew. Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness , 48, 65-75.

 

Magness, S. (2014). The Science of Running. Origin Press.

 

Verkhoshansky, Y. V. (1985). Programming and organization of training process. Moscow: Physical Culture and Sport