Hey everyone, Coach Harry here! Yes,Coach Harry, writing a blog post, miracles can happen! This is my first one soplease bear with me! And if you have any questions, please forward them on toCoach Mlait, he loves answering all of them, and promises to get back to youwithin 30 minutes, 24 hours, 7 days a week! ;) Anyway, why am I writing this?  Well it's a crazy world out there right now, so I wanted to write one for the youth/adolescent soccer players, parents of players, and soccer coaches. I think we all agree it has been stressful in some way or another for everyone, and it is probably harder than ever for the players to progress and get better at football. I love the game, and I love coachingyouth players, especially. As an S&C coach, my goals for each player areto: Keep it fun, engaging, and educate themHelp and guide them with their goalsMake sure they can play the game wellinto their 60’s (Injury risk reduction, for my fellow S&C coaches outthere) I’m telling you this because I want you to know that I have a purpose behind everything that I do for the player, which is so important when it comes to coaching an athlete. I’m constantly asking myself why? Why am I making them do this lift? Why am I testing? etc. Hold up… just so you know I’m English(big shock right), and refuse to call football, soccer! So, from now on you’llsee football in this post, no more soccer nonsense! Anyway, back to the blog… So, I want to ask you, the player, thekid with the big dreams of one day making it as a pro , a couple ofquestions…  You all have goals, and you all havethings that you can control. So, what are you doing off...

On the weekend I was able to link up with some friends for a pick up game of football. There's a group message for these games. And since the Spring I've had to decline the invites and posts to come out to play. That all changed Saturday when we met up for a game. And it had been a year or so since I'd been out to play. I expected there would be some rust. And I expected to be sore later. Active recovery, nutrition and sleep had to be planned and dialed in if I expected to get through the days that followed. I should add that after the game I stopped in to the gym to test some lifts. So I knew sleep would come easily that evening. But why do we need sleep? And how are my needs for sleep different than that of a baby or a young child? (cue the jokes of being a big baby or acting like a child on occasion...I'll wait) A recent study explains the different needs for sleep at various stages in life. As a baby up until two or three years of age sleep is needed for neural re-organization and learning. This is when our brain is still building and developing and we see the changes almost daily as first steps are taken and first words are spoken. This learning occurs during REM (rapid eye movement) stage sleep and for babies this can account for 50% of sleep. This makes sense when you consider the amount of growth and learning that takes place in the first 24 to 36 months. This is also the reason we let babies sleep as long as they need and don't wake them. When you wake someone deep in REM stage sleep they will be...

Your gym is closed. You need to keep distance from every one else. You might even be self-quarantined. You can't access your coach. You don't have a home gym set up. And if you're not an athlete what's the point of working on your performance and fitness anyway? Doesn't really sound like the prescription to improving your fitness and performance? But it could be. Below are 10 reasons you'll come out of COVID-19 fitter than before this all started. 1. Fitter relative to everyone else. Truth is we compare ourselves to others. Good or bad, it happens. We go on a hike with friends and family and notice we're the only ones huffing and puffing while wishing there were more stops for selfies i.e. rest and water breaks. You go on a beach vacation and you notice who goes to the pool and who avoids it. And of those that venture into the water who is all wrapped up and who ditches the cover ups and gets right in. Whatever the situation, we measure our efforts and progress relative to those around us. And guess what? Something like that doesn't change during a pandemic. For athletes seasons have been cancelled. Teams have been disbanded. And to prevent gatherings of larger groups there are no practices or training sessions. Most are in a holding pattern waiting until things return to normal. And while most are doing nothing some are doing something. And if it something isn't a lot or as much as you normally do it's more than your competitor that is binge watching Tiger King and already finished the new season of Ozark. Small, frequent and steady progress always leads to improvement compared to massive training sessions that only happen once in a while. If you are young athlete this is...

There are a few goals we have for everyone we work with. It doesn't matter if the individual's goal is performance, weight loss or rehab we look to achieve this with all of them?Do you know what 'it' is?What we're looking to achieve with all these clients is help them be as lean as possible. And here's why.For a movement, non-collision sport athlete one of the goals is to generate as much strength and power per unit of body weight. In cycling, the unit of interest is watts/kilo. And to improve is to increase our power, decrease our mass or both. Sometimes an athlete has maxed out on the power they can produce but they are carrying a few extra pounds. Leaning up a little bit can be the difference to increased performance.Obviously for the weight loss client we want to shed as much unnecessary mass as possible while keeping as much muscle as possible.And for the rehab client a leaner physique helps in a number of ways. A leaner indivudual can move better than an overweight one. They will have more energy to do more. And a leaner frame takes stress on load-bearing joints. With the knees for example, every pound that is shed takes four pounds off the knees.With my own training and goals I'm looking to be as lean and strong as possible. With the fondo coming up in a little over a week all the hard training should be done or wrapping up soon. And now it's just a matter of dialing in the nutrition and resting up.Obviously a lighter bike helps, especially when climbing hills. But instead of looking to save grams by upgrading seat posts, wheels and bottle cage holders, it would make more sense to shed pounds on the scale.For example, going from an...

Last week I was watching the Bachelorette with my wife. And yes, I surrendered my man card before settling in on the couch to watch.On this particular episode the girl (I'll pretend I can't remember her name so as to retain some of my manliness) and her dates appeared on the show Ellen. They played  a game call 'Never Have I Ever' and the guys were asked a number of questions to which they would answer 'I Have' or "Never Have'. And I thought this would be fun topic for a blog post from a coach's perspective.What are the things a coach would never say yes to? In no particular order here are the things a coach would never say.1. Ketogenic Diets Are a Bad Idea - We work with individuals that want to look, feel or play better. And to achieve each of these goals involves fitness training, and more specifically, resistance training. Carbohydrates are the fuel that allow us to train intensely. Restricting them in the diet impairs our ability to train as intensely as possible, delays our recovery and makes the training feel harder than it really is i.e. perceived exertion.But for those that don't have performance as their number one goal, ketogenic diets may be advantageous. There are instances when a reduction in carbohydrate consumption can helping with weight loss and with the treatment of some diseases.So while we typically advocate our athletes to eat a minimum of 40% of their calories as carbohydrate, and our look and feel better clients to eat a minimum or 30%, there may be times where a ketogenic diet could be a good thing for the right individual.2. Never Take Supplements - If you've worked with us for any period of time you know our definition of supplements which is 'in...

Recently I was sharing with a client how one of the most important factors related to how quickly and how much weight someone loses is not their training program. It isn't the sets and the reps. Or the frequency or duration. Or even the type of activity. And I'm not specifically referring to their nutrition. It isn't the ratio of macro-nutrients. Or the total energy consumed. Or the timing of the meals. Or whether they fasted or not. Sure all these matter and play a role in a weight loss strategy. But these efforts can all be wasted if there isn't one key component of a healthy lifestyle already in place. And this key component is sleep. I'm not going to go into detail in this blog about the impact of sleep and fat loss. If you would like to know more, and are interested in which hormones are involved in sleep and fat loss then make sure to comment below and I'll see you the report. But for now let's focus on getting the best sleep possible. And to do this I've broken this up into four categories which are routine, technology, journal and nutrition. Below is a little more detail on each. Condition #1 for Better Sleep - RoutineIn order to get the best sleep you need to establish a sleep routine. For here the analogy to use is putting a baby to sleep. If you do the same things in the same order each day at the same time before bed a baby will not only know to expect sleep is coming but will actually look forward to sleep. Change the order of the things you do and the baby may not sleep. Do these things at a different time and the baby may not sleep. Change the...

If you're serious about your health and performance than you want to know that you're doing the best you can with your efforts. And if you're not where you'd like to be weight-wise, performance-wise or in terms of your rehab than there are probably some things you could be doing a better job of. And if you are having some success in these areas than you are probably motivated to see what else you could do to ramp up your results even more.I'll be honest...I know I could do more personally. A while back I stated some of my goals. A few of them included hitting targeted strength measures, improved fitness levels and a specific scale weight.And while I'm on track to hit my goals I know I could be further along. I know I maybe under-estimated myself by selecting goals I knew I had a pretty good chance of attaining.There's not a problem in doing that. But we want to make sure we are giving our best effort and setting new goals if necessary.So while I'll probably wait until I realize the current goals I've set  until I pick new ones there are a few things I know I can improve on until then. With that in mind here are 5 Things I Can Do Better to Improve My Health & Performance.1. Improved sleep - I need 8 hours of sleep a night. Not 8 hours of bedtime on my computer, reading or doing sudoku puzzles but 8 actual hours of sleep. I need to make sure that I get as many of these 8 before midnight as possible. And I need to make sure to be as consistent with my time to bed and time to rise as  possible.2. More soft tissue work - Every workout should begin with some foam...

Hi there: Hope you're doing well. This has been a great week. You want to know why? I think it's because I've had great perspective lately. I've been really thankful for the good things in my life while not worrying so much about the distractions that can sometimes get us down. It might be the Thanksgiving weekend that has me in this kind of mood but it definitely ties in to your weight loss or performance goals.'Ok, hold on a sec', you're probably saying. 'Did he just say Thanksgiving and weight loss goals in the same sentence.' Absolutely I did. And here's what I mean by it.Our bodies go through both positive and negative stress. The positive stress is called eustress. Sound familiar? Unfortunately for most people this may be the first time they've ever heard of this word. And that says a lot if the positive aspect of stress is so foreign to us we don't even recognize the word for it.So it would make sense then that the balance tends to be skewed towards the negative end of the stress spectrum.But first we should identify a couple of hormones involved with the stress response. These are cortisol and adrenaline.Adrenaline is the hormone associated with 'fight or flight'  and results in increased heart rate, elevated blood pressure and boosts energy supplies. We are hard-wired for this response to always be at the ready and thus available to protect and keep us safe.Cortisol is another stress hormone and increases sugar (glucose) in the bloodstream, enhances your brain's use of glucose and increases the availability of substances that repair tissues.  It also alters immune system responses and suppresses the digestive system, the reproductive system and growth processes.Let's take a quick look at how stress affects digestion, recovery and training.1. When stress triggers the 'fight or fligt'...