ASCA Podcast #122 - Dr. Jamie Tallent

Dr. Jamie Tallent is the Director of the Human Performance Research Group at the University of Essex, previously holding the position of Associate Professor in Strength and Conditioning at St Mary's University. Jamie earned his PhD from Northumbria University, UK, focusing on corticospinal adaptations from eccentric and concentric resistance training muscle actions. Jamie has worked in professional sport, as the lead strength and conditioning coach at Derbyshire County Cricket Club. Jamie has authored over 80 peer-reviewed publications and numerous book chapters. His research, a mixture of applied and mechanistic studies, includes leading various projects in collaboration with International Cricket Teams, Premiership Football clubs, International Rugby Teams, and world-leading ballet schools and companies. Recently, Jamie has also begun to explore the role of strength and conditioning in children with cerebral palsy. QUOTES “Micro-dosing is just splitting up your training sessions, your volume of work into small manageable chunks” “I'm better putting in small doses that are going to enhance an athletes performance over long periods of time, rather than that scheduling in longer sessions that could affect their training in the subsequent days” “I think the recommendation for micro-dosing I'd almost give is that go to higher rep work as with lower rep work, maybe that's not as easy to microdose in time constrained situations because you're going to have to spend so much time warming up’” “What we've shown in ballet is that the groups that are training three times a week of 15 minutes versus 1 time a week of 45 minutes are getting slightly greater adaptations in strength, in jumping ability, in counter-movement jump.” “I think it's important how we package things as S & C coaches and I think it's important that the athletes are aware that micro-dosing is still going to help them. The narrative to athletes is even if you do one set, even if you do two sets, it's still a positive kind of thing for your sport.” SHOWNOTES 1) Jamie’s journey into sport science and strength and conditioning 2) The definition of microdosing and its use to reduce risk of injury or soreness 3) The philosophy of getting as much work as possible into athletes and how microdosing aligns with this 4) How time constraints influence microdosing sets and rep schemes 5) The timing of microdosing S&C around sports training sessions and “clustering” sessions in a training week 6) Examples of microdosing in cricket and ballet and the benefits of microdosing for training absenteeism 7) Managing your communication in different environments and the future of data analytics PEOPLE MENTIONED Glyn Howatson Nathan Spencer Duncan French Jess Turner