At the end of last year, I do not know how I managed to fit it in but I did a fortnight of work with the Australian Institute of Sport's female kayak squad.  The head strength & conditioning coach Glen "Worko" Workman is a great guy who also incidentally used to be my strength & conditioning coach when I played footy at Seagulls.  So we got on really well (as you can see from the pic below) and I learned a heap during the two weeks.  Here are the top 5 things I took out of it that:

1) Probably the most important exercise for a pulling sport is a chin or pull up.  This is even more true if it is a water based pulling sport like kayaking, paddling or swimming.  The reason being is that you don't pull the water to you but you pull yourself to water.  Otherwise you wouldn't go anywhere when you swam right... And the chin up builds strength the best in the muscle groups that are involved in this type of pulling.  To prove this, the kayak girls are not small petite girls like gymnasts but almost all of them could knock out at least 5 decent looking chin ups.

2) The type of cattle (athletes) you have matter a lot.  For instance, I am a massive fan of a short to long periodisation (training plan) with athletes - meaning they start at short distances, build speed and then progress to longer distances as their training develops.  This type of training planning has worked really well with elite sprinters and runners.  However all of Worko's squads including the men do a long to short periodisation; meaning they start at long distances and get shorter and shorter as they get closer to competition.  When I asked him about these two approaches, he admitted that some of the mens' kayak squad who are based in Western Australia actually do the short to long approach.  However Ken Wallace who is in Worko's squad here still beats them over all distances and he of course does the long to short.  So sometimes it doesn't matter which type of training you use, the genetic cream will always rise to the top.

3) You need to know the epidemiology of injuries in your chosen sport.  Epidemiology is basically the most common injuries that occur.  In kayaking, bicipital tendonitis which is an inflammation of the long head of the bicep tendon in the shoulder is the number one injury/condition they pick up.  They develop this due to the huge volume of work the shoulder goes through with their on water training.  So all of Worko's programs in the gym are in some way structured to a) avoid any exercises that will cause this condition to develop and b) provide exercises that will prehab this injury.  

4) Although variety of training and different types of training can keep the athletes "fresh", the most important thing for athletes to do are a) train in their chosen sport and b) strength work in the gym.  Introducing different training modes can actually be detrimental to their overall development.  For instance when I was there, the girls had a session with a new Pilates instructor who might have wanted to make an impression.  Anyway most of the girls ended up so sore they could not train properly the next day which meant their overall plan was disrupted and the coaches were definitely not pleased.

5) Each sport has a certain somatype (or body shape) that is consistent with better results.  For instance in kayaking having a thick and powerful torso is what Worko was quite concerned with a number of his "small hipped" girls.  Also having a larger arm span also obviously helps as it improves stroke length naturally.

As always team, let me know what you think and make sure to leave a comment.