ASCA Podcast #87 - Ben Serpell

ASCA Podcast

Ben Serpell is a strength and conditioning coach with the Geelong Cats, an adjunct associate professor at the University of Canberra and Senior Lecturer at University of New England. He completed his PhD through the medical school at the Australian National University, investigating musculotendinous stiffness and lower limb injury. He has since supervised several PhD's expanding on this work specifically investigating hamstring strain injury from a movement perspective and also nutritional interventions to support rehabilitation from injury. Ben has been working in elite sport for over 15 years having experience in professional Rugby (Gloucester Rugby), Australian Rules Football (Port Adelaide Football Club), Australian Rugby (Brumbies, Waratahs and Wallabies) and with individual athletes in Olympic and other sports. Ben has an eclectic mix of both academic knowledge and practical experience which has been demonstrated by his success at Brumbies Rugby and with individual athletes including David Pocock, Christian Lealiifano and Ellyse Perry. QUOTES “If you get on top of ACL and hamstrings, you’ll be able to deal with 90% of injuries in field sports” “The majority of time athletes are running and yet we spend so little time teaching people how to run as S&C coaches” “Rather than starting with a lot of jogging, I’m interested in getting someone to run well and then run well lots” “We focus so much on getting our hamstrings strong and I often wonder do we fatigue them trying to get them strong and predispose athletes to injury in the process” “Ultimately, if someone gets injured, they may never return to baseline and we need to look at what we are doing from a testing perspective and having a think about what we are getting from it” “Sometimes we can be best practitioners in world but if we can’t sell ourselves as coaches and get buy in, we are only going to be a portion of what we can be as coaches” SHOWNOTES 1) Ben’s journey from pouring beers in the UK to professional sport and a PhD 2) The big rocks to preparing athletes to be able to run well 3) The importance of free hip dominance, stance leg extension and foot plant from above for running technique 4) Implicit methods and visualisation to help players learn key technical components of running 5) Gym based exercise selection to prepare athletes to run fast 6) The right dose for hamstrings in the gym and the case against Nordics 7) How Henry Speight's hamstrings lead to selective targeting of regional hypertrophy in the hamstrings 8) The importance of knowing what type of DOMS responder your athletes are and how to schedule sessions based on that 9) Where to place quality speed work in a team sport environment 10) Assessments and tests Ben uses including the single leg squat 11) Mike Tindall's RDL strength and link to hamstring function PEOPLE MENTIONED Warren Young Mike Anthony Frans Bosch John Pyror Dean Benton Brett Robinson Matt Beckenham Ross Smith Henry Speight Craig Purdham Stephen Moore Mike Tindall Christian Lealiifano