Conor Cantwell | Sticking to the “Brilliant Basics”

How much of the athlete data you collect changes what you do next? Conor Cantwell, Associate Director for Sports Performance at William & Mary, explains how he chooses assessments based on the physical qualities athletes need and available resources. That includes accommodating sport coaches’ testing preferences while still getting data he can use to guide training. Drawing on Irish rugby experience, he discusses the big “S,” little “c” debate about balancing strength with conditioning. He explains how heart rate data helps him decide how much conditioning athletes need and considers how to keep players fit when playing time is limited. Cantwell discusses his PhD research into how submaximal tests can track fitness during the season without an all-out effort. He also explains how to match recovery strategies to the season. Hear how to use assessments to guide your programming and help athletes understand the choices behind their training and recovery.

Contact Information & Episode Links:

Reach Conor by email: cjcantwell@wm.edu and on Instagram: @cantwellconor | Find Eric on Instagram: @ericmcmahoncscs and LinkedIn: @ericmcmahoncscs

Join the NSCA Sport Science and Performance Technology Special Interest Group (SIG) on LinkedIn to connect with peers and discuss how data and technology can inform coaching decisions.

Conor Cantwell, MS, CSCS,*D, RSCC
Conor Cantwell is the Associate Director for Sports Performance at William & Mary, overseeing strength and conditioning for women’s basketball, volleyball, and men’s and women’s tennis. He also oversees sport science support services for the Sports Performance Department. Cantwell has over six years of experience at the professional and National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I and III levels. He earned a Master’s degree in Sport Physiology and Performance Coaching from Carroll University, where he also led research and sport science initiatives. Cantwell is pursuing a PhD through Technological University Dublin, where his research aims to investigate heart rate monitoring in collegiate women’s basketbal

Show Notes:

" The biggest thing I say to people when we're talking about our sport science stuff is like, what key qualities do we want from our athletes, and then what's the best way to assess them? [...] You just have to kind of break down the best you can do with the resources you have." 8:05

"You know, the biggest predictor of injury or the biggest risk factor for injuries, is previous injury. So, looking at what injuries may have occurred, where they're potentially susceptible to reoccurring is important." 11:10

"The more aerobically conditioned you are in just the general level of fitness, your ability to recover between practices and games is just going to be majorly increased." 19:40

Transcript:

00;00;02;18 - 00;00;23;25

Welcome to the NSCA Coaching Podcast. Season ten, episode nine. The biggest thing I say to people when we're talking about our sport science stuff is like, what key qualities do we want from our athletes, and then what's the best way to assess them? And then when we break that down, what metrics are the best way to kind of assess that rather than what technology do we have and what tests can we do.

00;00;23;26 - 00;00;42;06

So kind of reversing kind of the components that we want. And then just looking at how we can assess them. And that's what we kind of have here. And like it is great to have more resources. But again I don't think you. Necessarily have to have them. You just have to kind of break down the best you can do with the resources you have.

00;00;42;08 - 00;01;02;27

This is the NSCA Coaching Podcast, where we talk to strength and conditioning coaches about what you really need to know, but probably didn't learn in school, their strength and conditioning. And then there's everything else. Welcome to the NSCA Coaching Podcast, where we bring you conversations with coaches and practitioners who are helping advance the profession of strength and conditioning.

00;01;02;28 - 00;01;23;20

I'm your host, Eric McMahon from the NSCA. Today I'm joined by Conor Cantwell, Associate Director of Sports Performance at William and Mary. Connor, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, really excited to get to know you today. For those who don't know you. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey into strength and conditioning.

00;01;23;22 - 00;01;52;01

Yeah. So, as you said mentioned earlier, I'm a Director of Sports Performance here at William and Mary heading into my second year here now. Prior to here, I was at a DIII university in Wisconsin, Platteville, was there for about 18 months. Prior to that, I had done a season with the Cincinnati Reds organization at their little ciliate in Daytona Beach with the Daytona Tortugas and, originally from Ireland.

00;01;52;01 - 00;02;19;02

So I came over to the US to do my graduate assistantship, under Doctor Tim Carroll University in Wisconsin. So I was there for two years and prior to that did my undergrad at the University of Limerick in Ireland, and kind of worked across a variety of sports there, including kind of various age levels, Munster Rugby all the way from their kind of under 15 or 16, all the way up to an internship with the professional team.

00;02;19;05 - 00;02;40;28

Tons of different experiences. International perspective. Obviously, I hear the accent coming through and we don't always hear that accent, so I'm glad you told me where you're from. What about that? International perspective provides context and help in the role you currently have, and just how has that helped shape your coaching philosophy? Yeah, I think it's the international experience.

00;02;40;28 - 00;03;00;14

Then a changed sports that I've worked into, just kind of true. And everything kind of has helped. Different experiences help as you go. You're just constantly growing as well. But I think internationally it's different, but it's, you know, doesn't mean it's better or worse. Like I would say, there's a lot of, a lot of Irish conditioning coaches working internationally.

00;03;00;16 - 00;03;20;04

I would say sport science in Ireland is quite strong. You know, internationally we would have had good exposure to that true education and stuff. Would it be undergrad or just, in education? And my practical experience is like, I know I would in the Irish rugby system, there's four teams, and they were some of the earlier adopters of, of GPS technology.

00;03;20;04 - 00;03;45;27

And, you know, that was probably 15, 20 years ago now. But now we look and we see how many teams are using it. And I think here has definitely caught up, if not in maybe passing out a little bit now in certain regards. But yeah, it was interesting coming in with that. I think the biggest thing that I've had that's been more unique that I was able to bring early on, was we probably just maybe it's true, the nature of our sports have more of an emphasis on conditioning.

00;03;45;29 - 00;04;03;20

You know, it's something they talk about a little bit. I think with strength and conditioning. I say sometimes coaches here, it's a little bit of a big S, small c and but I think that depends on the sport you work in. Right. So some people just aren't used to doing as much conditioning. And I came in kind of with a lot of conditioning background, which was great because it was something that kind of was unique that I was able to bring to the table early on.

00;04;03;20 - 00;04;27;22

So sport science, that's topic I want to get into a little bit later in conditioning. That's a big one. I'm glad you mentioned that. Tell us about your current role at William and Mary. What are some of the teams you have and just the work you get to do on a daily basis? Yeah, so I came in initially, just as a sports performance coach for my first year, in the department came in.

00;04;27;22 - 00;04;51;01

I have women's basketball, volleyball and both men's and women's tennis. And, you know, my responsibilities with their team, with those teams involved, you know, full physical preparation, strength and conditioning, travel, women's basketball, so on the road and do a little bit more with them. And most of that comes down to some of the, the monitoring that we, we do with them with heart rate monitoring, which I can talk about a little bit when we get into sport science stuff.

00;04;51;01 - 00;05;11;26

But, the role has kind of developed, I guess we had a bit of a kind of change in, in our department. Around December time, we had a staff member move on for a new opportunity. So it was kind of a shuffle. So I moved into the associate director role, and kind of had already started overlooking a lot of our sport science initiatives here and kind of trying to lead some projects in that regard.

00;05;11;26 - 00;05;30;03

But that's kind of taken on a new, a new level now, kind of in, in the associate role and being able to kind of drive some projects. So we have a couple of things going on now. We we run some standardized assessments over the year just to kind of see, like and collect data over the year to see if we are having changes, maybe see what trends are happening.

00;05;30;03 - 00;05;51;22

So, you know, our athletes when they leave in the spring, coming back way worse from not training. What kind of trends are we seeing over the year? Are we actually making meaningful differences rather than just looking at the metrics? So, you know, we do some statistical stuff in the background to see those. Do those, changes actually matter or is it just kind of normal biological variation?

00;05;51;25 - 00;06;27;03

And then we have some projects. sport science was going on as well around trying to integrate our sport science within, our Return to Play framework, which we're kind of trying to build out a little bit. So we're going at the DI level now, but you've been at the DIII level. What's the landscape of sport science that you're seeing and just the work you're able to do in the roles that you've had, around sport science and just the ability to integrate where we're at today in terms of technology and statistics and all the proof of concept that we're trying to get into our training approach.

00;06;27;05 - 00;06;50;05

Yeah. For sure. I obviously I've experienced, you know, like I said earlier, professional DIII, DI, two different environments to two different continents. So it's all been very different. And alongside that, as you know, more than anyone, like sport science is ever evolving to alongside that. So it's changed a lot. I would say at the DIII level, it just depended on like access to resources.

00;06;50;05 - 00;07;10;23

So like a Carol, during my graduate assistantship, we had access to a lot of equipment because, you know, kind of part of the program. And it was great to have that with the athletes. The biggest difference you're going to see, is generally in the caliber of the athlete, but not always. And I think that's the interesting thing is that sometimes you can have a really good athlete to that level to it may just be there.

00;07;10;24 - 00;07;25;09

They're not as, as good as the sport. Or they may be and they just didn't get opportunities. You know, they focus more on academics. So we saw a variety of that. But I would say when I went to school, we probably didn't have as many resources at the Division III level. And you kind of just have to be a bit more innovative.

00;07;25;12 - 00;07;42;21

But I think it brings you back to your, your core principles. You know, you don't like, rely as much and be completely dependent on the technology. And you're kind of trying to see what you can do, small stuff, whether it's maybe bringing in some subjective stuff, whether it's wellness questionnaires, stuff like that that you maybe might not use as your number one.

00;07;42;21 - 00;08;05;02

But if that's all you have, it's something where zenith, the Division I level, like we have access to a lot here. And it's great. But I think people can almost get, get trapped in that a little bit too, or it's like you've all this access and people just want to play with these training toys. And I think being at the level prior to that really helped kind of ground you in your principles of like, what do I actually need to collect?

00;08;05;03 - 00;08;21;21

Like the biggest thing I say to people when we're talking about our sport science stuff is like, what key qualities do we want from our athletes, and then what's the best way to assess them? And then when we break that down, what metrics are the best way to kind of assess that rather than what technology do we have and what tests can we do.

00;08;21;21 - 00;08;37;20

So kind of reversing kind of the components that we want. And then just looking at how we can assess them. And that's what we kind of have here. And like it is great to have more resources. But again, I don't I don't think you necessarily have to have them. You just have to kind of break down the best you can do with the resources you have.

00;08;37;22 - 00;09;05;08

Just hearing your response to that question, you sort of get into your approach towards the needs analysis and how you would integrate technology and information and really use best practices. Integrate that into training as best way you can communicate the information. And I think coaches and our listeners will resonate with that. Connor, coming in from Ireland, getting your bachelor's degree there, then getting your master's degree in the United States.

00;09;05;08 - 00;09;26;10

How do you view strength and conditioning in sport science education in different parts of the world? Yeah, I think it's ever evolving. And I think like the reason, you know, I wouldn't fully classify myself as a sports scientist. I think I'm definitely a coach first, but I like to think it's kind of something that I add a lot to my skill set that can help me be a better coach.

00;09;26;12 - 00;09;51;10

Whereas I think we've seen in the last, again, kind of even since I finished my undergrad, we'll say like 4 or 5 years, like the evolution of a lot of places. Now, having a solar sports scientist, which has expanded the bandwidth in terms of what that person can do. But, yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing, like I said, is having those core principles and then it's making making it actionable.

00;09;51;10 - 00;10;12;15

So like, that's the thing I saw early on was like people had all this information, but they didn't really know what to do with it. You know, you have stuff like people talk about feature creep, where you're just continuously adding new metrics to people read about nothing's ever coming out, or, you know, you see a lot of it where like, people just become dependent on one person in an environment for all the sport science stuff.

00;10;12;18 - 00;10;31;27

And then that person leaves and the systems kind of crumble. So I think it's starting off very simple and just building, building up on your systems over time. But making sure you're doing it. That's right. For kind of the tech context that you're in and your environment because it's a system is too complicated. And then that person leaves or people don't understand it.

00;10;31;27 - 00;11;03;27

It's just not going to work. Let's dig a little deeper. I know you come from a rugby background. You're working with a number of different sports now. When you first began working with a new team or a new athlete, what are your priorities and processes and the things that you want to establish early? Yeah. I guess the first thing is, you know, when everyone comes in in college athletics get they get their medical clearances and it's always good to just sit down with the Atletic trainers and, and talk about that and just see any significant injury history.

00;11;03;29 - 00;11;25;13

I think that before you start looking at anything, I just think it's important to take note of that. You know, the the biggest predictor of injury or the biggest risk factor for injuries, previous injury. So looking at kind of what injuries may have occurred where they're potentially susceptible to, to reoccurring is important. And then we kind of have like our standardized testing that we'll do for for more sports.

00;11;25;13 - 00;11;45;25

So some specific tests for certain sports, but generally speaking, you know, we'll do our four split jumps, so we'll do a kind of movement jump initially. We'll do that pretty frequently. But we'll we'll get that baseline when they come in. We'll usually do a squat jump to. So we can kind of analyze how efficient they are neuromuscular.

00;11;45;28 - 00;12;06;20

And we'll test that probably like every eight weeks or so as well to compare. But then alongside that we'll do some other kind of testing that we don't do as frequently. So right now we're kind of rolling out, maybe once a semester doing a drop jump and stuff like that, and we'll get some information from that, which is great, to kind of get an idea of their initial profile.

00;12;06;22 - 00;12;36;25

But it's also kind of trying to think of if an injury was to occur, some information that we would like to have or healthy looks like. But having said that, if something comes up that's kind of like potentially a risk factor for injury, we can intervene before an injury may ever occur. So stuff like a drop jump, we're kind of we do some teams do an aura board, but we've kind of gone with some teams to a single leg, ISO hamstring test with the, the bridge hamstring test.

00;12;36;27 - 00;12;52;25

So we've done that with some teams and then with a force frame to we'll do some like shoulder I or internal rotation external rotation. And that just depends on the sport. But a lot of my sports kind of have a bit of an overhead component. So we will we will test that as well. And again that's probably like once a semester.

00;12;52;25 - 00;13;10;20

So and it can identify kind of some risk factors. But some of it could even just be some some strengths and weaknesses. And just seeing kind of what lead the program. And then kind of lastly to come back on the conditioning piece, I guess depending on the sport, like we will do some form of conditioning test. And that varies.

00;13;10;20 - 00;13;30;13

And I know it's a kind of a point of contention within the industry sometimes, but so like we're basketball, we run the mile. It's not the, the the best test, but it's a test that the coach kind of wanted to implement. That had been done for a bit. So we do it, you know, we get some information off of it and we can we can still calculate stuff like, maximum aerobic speed from that.

00;13;30;13 - 00;13;57;18

And we use that for a prescription then. So yeah, big S little C, I like the conditioning talk. And I think we can get down the rabbit hole of sports specific conditioning. This is this is a highly debated topic within the field. I come from a baseball background. Think about sports specific training for that versus maybe what's the most efficient way to condition yourself for sport?

00;13;57;21 - 00;14;23;12

How do you navigate those conversations when maybe you have a coach that is proposing, hey, can we do this test? And you know, it's not ideal from a sports specific context, but or on the other side, you want to be more efficient in in your methods and try to implement something that, hey, this is a best practice that we're going to put in place because we have a lot of information here.

00;14;23;12 - 00;14;47;10

How do you navigate those types of thoughts and conversations? Yeah, I think it comes back to your context first. So like for me, I think with the conditioning test, you know, I would have preferred maybe something like a Yo-Yo, to be completely transparent. But when I sat down and talked with the coach, it was it was a very kind of it was easier to understand where she was coming from and when she kind of explained it.

00;14;47;10 - 00;15;04;02

So, so like, the biggest thing I hate with a conditioning test is when there's no, there's no measurement from it. So, like, you have certain tests out there that are used, you know, know one that soccer uses a lot of, like the menu test and there's no metric that comes from it. It's like a hard conditioning test and you pass or you fail.

00;15;04;02 - 00;15;28;11

But we can't measure any progress. You just kind of it's a survival test, right? And I don't think there's much benefit in those. I guess the criticism that they would have had in the, in the environment where they say it's context dependent, if they would have felt with the Yo-Yo that we were never getting accurate data, because if we set a standard of like, we wanted certain people to get to a certain center to, you know, to be asked for their conditioning.

00;15;28;13 - 00;15;42;13

People would just drop straight out at that level. So we never actually saw, like, what level they were at. Or you could just, like, theoretically, you know, if you were not as motivated, maybe not try as hard on it and then you just drop out and you kind of don't have to do as much as the person beside you.

00;15;42;20 - 00;16;02;00

Whereas they felt something like the mile, like you have to finish it so you can go back and forth on that a little bit. But I guess where I kind of came to a compromise on it was, well, at least it's measurable. And at least I can still calculate something like maximum speed from it for my prescription, which I can then use to train.

00;16;02;02 - 00;16;27;11

I guess we're we're lucky with basketball. There's a lot of what I'm talking about here is that we have reminders for everything we do, and all practices, all conditioning. And, and the coaches are very bought into that. And we've established system that was kind of here before I got here. And it's kind of been built on a little bit from that, from some of the work repeaters did, who was my predecessor before I got here, and I kind of expounded on that a little bit.

00;16;27;11 - 00;16;48;19

But from that information, we can kind of get a lot of like what practice looks like, what conditioning looks like, and be very targeted in the the dose of conditioning were given as such. And then over time we can kind of measure measure the response in terms of just internal training load, in terms of what we did a month ago compared to what we're doing now.

00;16;48;21 - 00;17;16;12

And again, we might get into it a little bit, but I've actually started a PhD in February, which is going to start looking at some maximal fitness testing. So we might still do the mile as our just general fitness test that coaches love to do. But I think a thing with so maximal fitness testing is it's something that's low, fatiguing and can be utilized throughout the year because I think a lot of things that happen with Fitness Test is, we see it in a lot of sports is, you know, you do 2 or 3 of them a year.

00;17;16;12 - 00;17;38;29

You probably do those three tests over a very condensed, maybe eight week period all across preseason, and then we don't touch it again until either mid off season or at the earliest or the next preseason, where. So maximal testing could probably be carried out as much as weekly if you really wanted to. And then when a coach comes and asks, like, you know, are we are we in shape?

00;17;39;00 - 00;18;01;02

We can say like based on the data, physiologically, yes, we are or we're not. And and I think a big thing with that is, is potentially looking at our starters a nonstarter and making sure that if we are topping up conditioning, always our nonstarter is that, that we're giving them enough that they're not losing fitness because if someone gets hurt, it's it's kind of that that next person up mentality.

00;18;01;02 - 00;18;25;13

So, they got to be ready because if they're not ready. Well, then they'll get hurt too. So it's that vicious cycle, right? For sure. And this is a this is an important conversation because I think there's when you look at it physiologically in the US especially, there's a huge emphasis on anaerobic natured sports. But a test like the mile, an aerobics fitness test.

00;18;25;13 - 00;18;53;21

And I want to dig into your rugby background because my perception of rugby we got we got a lot of big bodies, strong, resilient bodies. But you're running and you're moving and there is an Arabic fitness component to the sport of rugby. But also the size probably lends more towards the anaerobic fitness. How important is it in this anaerobic sport world that we consider aerobic fitness as strength and conditioning coaches?

00;18;53;23 - 00;19;16;23

It's hugely important. Yeah, I think it's it's something that, you know, me and our director here, ready to talk about all the time. He's a, he's a big, a big advocate of aerobic of training and kind of feels, as you alluded to, that a lot of coaches just have neglected it over the years, or I think a lot of it too, is coaches are uncomfortable in that, in that space.

00;19;16;23 - 00;19;47;16

And they don't want to to do it and they perceive it potentially as like it just has to be long and slow and boring or that's not necessarily the case. But the selling point I've had for has been like, I've done it with volleyball this year in their off season, which a lot of people wouldn't, wouldn't do or wouldn't think of doing, but even some of recovery point of view, you know, the more aerobically conditioned you are in just the general level of fitness, your ability to recover between practices and games is just going to be majorly increased.

00;19;47;16 - 00;20;08;11

So that was my big sell to the girls in the volleyball this year was you guys play Friday, Saturday every single weekend, the entire fall. And in you might play two on a Friday and maybe one on a Saturday. Like it's a lot, right. So, to help with that in some regard, having that Arabic conditioning, is going to help you.

00;20;08;11 - 00;20;26;05

And then obviously on top of that, you know, we think of our energy system development, having that aerobic base is going to increase your ceiling of any of your your anaerobic outputs that you can, you can have. So, yeah, we do, we do a lot of it. And we, we, we kind of we sell it, you know what I mean?

00;20;26;05 - 00;20;40;27

Because I think a lot of people aren't used to doing it, and it's very different. But, we sell why it's important that it's number one, it's going to help with your recovery. But two, just general fitness, it's going to increase your ceiling of what your other, your other energy systems are capable of. I like that perspective.

00;20;40;27 - 00;21;05;22

And it comes through, you know, recovery is always an Arabic process. And so we can essentially train for recovery in all of our athletes. Even on the anaerobic side. How important is recovery? I know that's a big topic as well in working with your athletes and teams. And how intentional are you in putting recovery modalities and other things into your training?

00;21;05;24 - 00;21;26;00

Huge, yeah. Like I mentioned, you know, volleyball, it's Friday, Saturday. And then once we get into conference with with basketball, it's it's Friday Sunday on the women's side. So you got that day in between. You know, the nature of, of of scheduling. Everyone does their best, but we end up having a lot of split weekends, too.

00;21;26;00 - 00;21;39;24

Or, you know, we might be away on a Friday night. We could be four hours away. You got to travel back on the bus on a Friday night, get back into 2 a.m., and then you're playing at 1 p.m. on a Sunday or vice versa. You know, you're home on a Friday night, and then you have to get on the bus on a Saturday, travel for hours and play on Sunday.

00;21;39;24 - 00;22;00;04

So those turnarounds can be difficult. But a lot of the recovery is, is, is education in terms of we talk about it a lot. So we kind of we've stolen this from from some other people that have done it. But I gave a presentation every year to, to both teams, both those teams men's women's basketball and volleyball.

00;22;00;07 - 00;22;22;14

About the other 22 hours. So, you know, we spend about two hours a day practicing training, whatever it might be. But what are you doing when you're outside of the facility? And that comes down to your core pillars of, you know, your nutrition, your sleep there. You can't really outdo them. Right? Like you got to refuel your body after you've exerted it and you've got to to pre fuel before you, you're going to exert again.

00;22;22;17 - 00;22;42;12

And sleep is going to be your number one thing of recovery. You know if people ask about recovery mortalities and all that stuff, which is great. The first thing we'll always come back to is how is your sleep? How is your nutrition and hydration that obviously goes with that. And if they're not nailed on, I just think you're wasting your time with the other, you got to nail them on first.

00;22;42;15 - 00;23;00;19

We call it brilliant basics. So if you're good at them and if that's all you're good at. You just keep getting better and better at them. I think I'll take you a long way. But after that, then we kind of have a broken down into, into different sections. So, like, right after the game, we have our, our react.

00;23;00;20 - 00;23;21;17

You know, you're reacting initially like, how can we start getting fuel on board straight away. Our next one after that is, is restore, and we're trying to kind of restore different qualities. And if it's a Friday night game that might feed into kind of what they do when they get up on a Saturday morning. And then we're kind of trying to.

00;23;21;19 - 00;23;52;02

Trying to get ready for the game that afternoon with practice and kind of get moving again. And then the next one is refine, which is the day of the game. It's like, all right, now we're preparing to go again. So we talk about that and we have different modalities kind of placed within them. And the biggest thing I talk to them about as well is like in the off season, potentially not being as reliant on these so that we actually allow some of these adaptations to occur in your body to naturally recover as much as you possibly can.

00;23;52;09 - 00;24;08;10

And then when you do need a shorter turnaround recovery that you used them in season. So like a lot of the research and the kind of controversy around ice bats, like ice bats appear to work, you know, we've seen some of the research on that. But then there's the the kind of the pushback on. Do they blunt certain responses?

00;24;08;10 - 00;24;23;15

Well, if we're playing Friday night and we're playing again Sunday, we're just going to take that here. Right? We don't we don't. We just want to recover and be able to go again. But if we're in the off season and you know, the the girls kind of, laugh at me when I say this, but like, what do you need to recover for, per se?

00;24;23;16 - 00;24;53;15

We're going through a hard training block. Allow your body to kind of recover itself at certain times of the year, if that makes sense. So I like that. Basing your recovery approach on the time of the year. Yeah. Keying in and educating so that it's not just what your thoughts are. You're educating them so that they can understand the perspective that, hey, ice bath aren't the aren't the best thing, aren't the worst thing, but we can use them tactfully to get the response we want out of our program.

00;24;53;17 - 00;25;15;29

And just on that as well. Sorry. Ask Chris, but the last thing I would say on that is some of it is preference too. Because again, anyone that's ever kind of dug into the the literature on recovery, like some of the evidence on some of the most out of these is a little iffy. But I will say when it comes down to like recovering in a short period of time, some of it is very much placebo.

00;25;15;29 - 00;25;36;11

But if you feel better, it works. You know, and we definitely sell a little bit of that, depending on what it is, as long as it's not something crazy, that could be detrimental, but it really is, you know? Yeah, there's some people have different habits that work for them. But if even if some of it I think is just mental, they have a routine, they go through it, and they feel better after it.

00;25;36;11 - 00;25;58;08

Great. That's that's your recovery. And we'll go with that. Yeah. That can be really challenging for us. We try to be so evidence based and figure out why things are working or why things are helping the athlete perform or recover. We may not always have those answers. We have to give in to our athletes at times to be like, hey, you know yourself really well.

00;25;58;10 - 00;26;17;28

I want you to be at your best. Let me show you that I can give you that that leeway to navigate your performance and and perform at your best. So I really like that approach. I love the wisdom you're sharing. Obviously you dig deep and you continue to grow. Coming off your master's degree, you've had a few different jobs in the field.

00;26;18;02 - 00;26;42;08

How do you continue to grow as a coach? What are some of the resources and habits you have to stay sharp in the field? Yeah. I think it's it's trying to and it's very easy to become isolated when you're in an environment like you have the coaches around you. But again, you're somewhat siloed in that in terms of after you've seen kind of their system or their programing, you just become very used to it.

00;26;42;08 - 00;26;58;13

And if you only ever see that, I think, it's hard to grow beyond that. So I think it you have to make a conscious effort to reach out to other coaches, to engage with other coaches, and I try and do that as much as possible, and just see other ways of doing it, doing things. What are people are doing?

00;26;58;13 - 00;27;19;23

What are people are trying? It doesn't necessarily matter if you agree or disagree. You know, it's just seeing it. And I think even going through that in your own head of like critically assessing like what are people are doing and, how that might work in your environment or how it might not. Because I think by doing that it just keeps keeps you sharp.

00;27;19;25 - 00;27;50;07

So that's I guess one thing is just engaging with other coaches and, and you, you expand your network from that too. But the other thing I think I've always kind of tried to do and continue to do is, is to just read as much as as possible, on, you know, what our new topics or, rereading all old stuff again, I think, you know, some of the older people in this field will tell you that, some of the stuff that's new and exciting now was it was around 20 or 30 years ago, and it's just coming back into fashion.

00;27;50;07 - 00;28;18;11

And, I know a lot of coaches mentioned that about isometric now are big and they're great. But I think they were probably big a long time before, before now. So, but we forget that. Right? So it's going back. And what I like to do with a lot of it is like find the origin of it, because I think sometimes we do lose some of the origin of, of some of the stuff that we do, and just critically assess, like some of the stuff that we believe, nor the limitations.

00;28;18;13 - 00;28;35;09

But doesn't mean you can't implement it, but just know what it does and what it doesn't do. That goes, I think, for anything we do from a training point of view that goes for any metrics we use sport science wise. Anything like that. It's just being being aware of it's, it's it's, strengths, weaknesses, any potential limitations.

00;28;35;11 - 00;28;55;19

But yeah. So I guess where that's like empirical evidence or reading research papers, which are great. Or reading like, you know, maybe more informal, kind of like coaching blogs and stuff like that. And the great thing about now is it just feels like there's there's just endless information. So anything you want to read about, you could just go find it.

00;28;55;22 - 00;29;17;19

Which is great. Yeah. Great advice for young coaches there or people getting started in their career to keep learning, keep digging into the research. You make a great point that a lot of things in our field recirculate and come back to life. They might have a different name. I know some coaches, and I love when they say, hey, tell me what it is, and I'll tell you what we used to call it.

00;29;17;22 - 00;29;38;02

They that's always a funny quote that comes up at conferences quite a bit, but there's some truth to that. There's a lot of concepts that were put in practice in the 70s, in the 80s, years ago that we bring back maybe with new technology or presented in a slightly different way, but we can get that original context and go back on that.

00;29;38;02 - 00;30;01;13

And if we learn that we're better for it today and how we're implementing and maybe just have a little bit more of a well-rounded knowledge of the technology or concepts that we're delivering. So I, I really like that perspective. You come in with an international perspective, you've experienced both sides and you've worked and had a few different jobs in the field.

00;30;01;16 - 00;30;37;05

What excites you the most about the future of the strength and conditioning profession as you are looking ahead? Yeah, I think as someone that's probably, you know, more biased towards the the sport science editing. Like I said, I definitely see myself as a coach first, but I, I have that kind of that background in sport science. I just think the the more sport science technology is becoming available, like you look again, I keep referencing kind of ten, 15 years ago, like when I was first getting familiar with the field, what it looked like compared to now, you know, for splits were not as widely accessible as they are now.

00;30;37;05 - 00;30;58;21

A lot of the force plates that most people were were looking at were lab based. You know, they would go in and do it periodically, or we were using jump mats and jump mats at the time for some people were were great. And look at how much that's moved on. So I think that's going to be exciting for the, the future in terms of how more, how much more widely that's going to be available to people.

00;30;58;24 - 00;31;19;17

And, you know, people getting more education in that I think we can be, more critical in terms of our, our programing and if our programing is working, you know, you know, Mike, Mike Stone, doctor Mike Stone always talks about like, if we're not assessing, we're guessing a little bit. So just having being rooted in, in some, some kind of testing every now and again.

00;31;19;17 - 00;31;36;29

And that being more widely accessible is, is going to be great as that happens. And I think we're seeing it all the time now with AI, you know, I don't know where it's going to go, but like it's here and I don't think it's going away. So I think we need to utilize it, to help us be more efficient.

00;31;37;00 - 00;32;12;10

And I think, again, I don't think it's ever going to take take away from us that human element of thinking. Coaching is huge, but it definitely could make us more efficient and increase our bandwidth and what we can do. So whether that's taking us away from the laptop a little bit more, which I think we'd all be grateful for in terms of not spending 2 or 3 hours working on dashboards where maybe AI can do that work for us now, and we can spend more time working on maybe communicating that information to our coaches or to our athletes, you know, or working on maybe evaluating deeper questions within our data rather than working

00;32;12;10 - 00;32;35;02

on, like just pulling it together. So all of that, I think is exciting for the future. But yeah, the expansion of kind of technology and how we can just really, utilize it. Yeah, I like it pouring into the new, keeping an open mind and trying to expand the services that we're offering, our teams, our athletes, our universities, our organizations.

00;32;35;04 - 00;32;59;02

A lot of wisdom in that for everybody at every career stage, I know our listeners are going to want to continue this conversation. What's the best way for them to reach out and connect with you? Yeah. They can get me on Instagram. You know, pretty active on Instagram. I don't I don't post a ton. I put up a little bit of content, every now and again, some of our kind of lifts with different teams or some of our conditioning stuff that we do.

00;32;59;05 - 00;33;22;22

So name on Instagram is just Cantwell. Connor. And then you can, you can email me either, my work emails to CJCantwell@W&M.edu. Awesome. I'll add those to the show notes. Thanks, Connor. Thanks, everyone. Listening to the NSCA Coaching podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe and share it with a colleague.

00;33;22;29 - 00;33;36;27

For more resources, education, and professional development opportunities, visit NSCA.com. Thanks for listening and thank you to Sorinex Exercise Equipment. We appreciate their support.

00;33;37;00 - 00;33;55;23

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