This week, Dr. Tim Gabbett joins me on the Healthy Wealthy and Smart podcast to talk about how he prepares athletes to perform at high levels of competition and mitigate injury risk during critical periods of play. Tim is an applied sports scientist who consults with elite international athletes and has authored numerous research papers that benefit the sports performance community.
In this episode, we discuss:
-Sport specific external and internal training loads
-How chronic training load history impacts training guidelines and injury prevention
-The mathematical relationship between fitness and fatigue and its effect on physical performance
-Why building trust with athletes supports the mental component of competition
-And so much more!
Tim stresses that it is more common for players to be undertrained than over trained when it comes to injury risk. He suggests, “High chronic load is protective against injury and gives you the physical qualities that allow you to compete.”
Tim also develops strong relationships with his athletes to help facilitate the training regimen. He emphasizes, “They need to know that I have their best interest at heart. I'm looking to keep them injury free and make sure they can compete as hard as possible. They know at the end of it I'm not asking them to do anything that will put them at risk, but it will prepare them better and keep them injury free.”
Our role as coaches and physical therapists is to guide our athletes during times of difficulty within training sessions for ultimate success in competition. “Winning games comes back to how often they have learned to win the session. The more often we can put players into sessions where they either dig in or give in, they learn to find a way to fight themselves out of the dark hole and the more likely it will be a familiar place in competition.”
For more information on Dr. Gabbett:
Dr Tim Gabbett has 20 years experience working as an applied sport scientist with athletes and coaches from a wide range of sports.
He holds a PhD in Human Physiology (2000) and has completed a second PhD in the Applied Science of Professional Football (2011), with special reference to physical demands, injury prevention, and skill acquisition.
Tim has worked with elite international athletes over several Commonwealth Games (2002 and 2006) and Olympic Games (2000, 2004, and 2008) cycles. He continues to work as a sport science and coaching consultant for several high performance teams around the world.
Tim has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles and has presented at over 200 national and international conferences. He is committed to performing world-leading research that can be applied in the ‘real world’ to benefit high performance coaches and athletes.
You can get in contact with Tim at his website Gabbett Performance and follow his updates on twitter!
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Xo Karen
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