ASCA Podcast #99 - Professor Chris McLellan

Professor Chris McLellan is the Vice President of Sports Performance at the Florida Panthers in the National Hockey League (NHL) and Professor of Exercise and Sports Science at the University of Southern Queensland. He is also the co-founder of Horyzen Performance LLC offering bespoke athlete profiling and strength and conditioning services to professional sporting teams and elite athletes around the world. Professor McLellan has over 25yrs experience as an athlete preparation specialist internationally working in in the National Rugby League (NRL), Australian Football League (AFL), professional Rugby Union and the NHL. He also has a Phd in Exercise & Sports Science and Strength & Conditioning, a Masters of Physiotherapy and a Bachelor of Exercise Science. Chris’ research areas of interest include acute and chronic adaptation to strength and power training, hormonal responses to blunt force trauma and collision during contact sports and body composition, anthropometric & fibre type profiling for optimised performance and injury risk mitigation. Professor McLellan’s research has resulted in over 120 published works in peer reviewed journals, published abstracts and presentations at national and international conferences. QUOTES “I think being systematic is massive in strength & conditioning” “As a general comment based on subsequent performance in games and training, and sleep is massive, so if we can’t get back to home and have wheels on the ground by 2am, we stay an extra night” “The biggest piece for us is we aim to develop power and strength without loading players up with a load of hypertrophy” “We will try to manage the eccentric components of our lifts because we don’t want to make them much bigger in-season” “If we go 10 days without a lift, we’ll start to see shifts in their force-time-power curves” “Everyone talks about philosophy but my philosophy is keep the main thing the main thing” “In terms of salivary hormones, cortisol is a very blunt measure so I have embarked for quite some time to differentiate a more precise measure of stress” SHOWNOTES 1) Chris’ journey from police officer and age grade footballer to S&C coach and professor 2) From academia to the Florida Panthers and what Chris brought into the program in his first year 3) The usefulness of accelerometry measures in the NHL and the similarity of injuries between rugby league and ice hockey 4) Managing the density of competition and the workload of players in the NHL 5) Dealing with the longest game in NHL history and novel nutrition approaches to help keep players fueled. 6) The focus and logistics of strength & conditioning in-season for ice hockey 7) Managing hypertrophy with cold water immersion and limiting eccentric components of lifts 8) The efficacy of measuring different salivary hormones and differentiating physical and psych stressors 9) Practical considerations for measuring salivary hormones and the minimum amount of measures need for it to be worthwhile 10) The benefits of attending conferences and reading bona fide scientific literature for S&C coaches PEOPLE MENTIONED Kelvin Giles Steve Nance Billy Johnstone Andy O’Brien Aaron Wellman Mike Keelan Lynn Jones