UK S&C Gym - 3 Year Thread Update

So – three years ago, a very nieve and giddy young me writes a very excited forum thread about how our dream of opening an S&C centre in the UK had finally come true. The thread is here: ( Forums - T Nation - The World's Trusted Community for Elite Fitness )

…to cut a long story short (or TL;DR for any fellow redditors :stuck_out_tongue: ) - my mate and had been reading ‘t-mag’ since 2001 and wishing that there was somewhere to do all this awesome stuff in the UK. We got drunk, jokingly said we should do it, and somehow it happened.

Well I’m relieved to announce that we’ve made it thru the first three years and we’re still going! The landscape of sports performance has changed MASSIVELY in that time and everything’s looking incredibly positive for the future. At the time we didn’t realise how little the uk knew about the role of s&c and to see the cultural change that has happened since then is incredible.

I’ve recently set up a basic wordpress blog (http://core-cambridge.com) which I’m updating with photos of “stuff” when I get the chance. We’ve got some ideas of what might be an awesome coach education site in the future but I’ll leave that till then. For now, it’s rubbish, but it’s more than we had.

Anyway, the point of this post was really just to i) let you guys who remember the thread know that we made it so far, ii) let anyone who hadn’t seen the original thread know that your dream is possible if you just give it a go (I was slash am still just a humble forum lurker who really wanted to do this stuff), and iii) discuss UK stuff with anyone who wants a chat. (but please no questions about set-up costs or finances, it’s just not british =)

best wishes all
Dan

I was actually looking through the old thread the other day. You guys have a sweat set up in Cambridge. Glad to hear that you are still going strong.

Did you get anything sorted with the rugby squad?

We have “a sweat set-up”? - As it happens, you’re right :wink:

Yes absolutely, we run a full S&C academy set-up at the Uni Rugby Club, and we were providing both S&C and physio support for the city club, up until the point that the club ran into disarray at xmas time. (Which was a shame as we were starting to make good progress)

We’re doing bits of work for four national set-ups and there’s a lot more stuff in the pipeline for 2010 -which is nice.

The biggest surprise to me in all of this has been the “miracle” effect that we’ve been having with people that have been stuck in an endless loop of seeing physios and getting re-injured. By simply integrating some movement pattern work with S&C coaches into their late stage rehab, these people are “magically” fixed.

It seems there’s a huge hole in how rehab is handled in this country (ie the gap between physio and full function) and a ways to go before this is culturally accepted as the norm. As more people start offering it, and more centres set up, I’m sure it’ll all seem perfectly normal. Doctors are just about happy to recommend pilates for people with back issues, so I’m sure the acceptance of corrective exercise can’t be far off.

…If we could have something akin to your college sport set-ups in the uk, teaching movement patterns and athleticism at an early age it’d be a dream!! The thought of a college or school having an S&C coach is absolutely laughable. (…In fact - that said, a lot of top flight sports clubs don’t have one!)

Reading through the last post and that shit looks awesome!!! Where about’s in Cambridge are you set up? My mate’s at uni there (Anglia Ruskin) and would love to drop by and see the place on one of my many visits there.

we’re (sort of) near the science park mate. If you look at our blog, there’s a contact us page and that’s got a cycle map which shows that it’s only a 10-min cycle ride from the centre of town.

…as it happens, we lecture for the ARU sports science (& coaching science) course, and the students get to come to our centre as part of their studies.

London hosting the 2012 Olympics must have given your business a nice boost. Are you training any Olympic hopefulls?

[quote]coredan wrote:
We have “a sweat set-up”? - As it happens, you’re right :wink:

Yes absolutely, we run a full S&C academy set-up at the Uni Rugby Club, and we were providing both S&C and physio support for the city club, up until the point that the club ran into disarray at xmas time. (Which was a shame as we were starting to make good progress)

We’re doing bits of work for four national set-ups and there’s a lot more stuff in the pipeline for 2010 -which is nice.

The biggest surprise to me in all of this has been the “miracle” effect that we’ve been having with people that have been stuck in an endless loop of seeing physios and getting re-injured. By simply integrating some movement pattern work with S&C coaches into their late stage rehab, these people are “magically” fixed.

It seems there’s a huge hole in how rehab is handled in this country (ie the gap between physio and full function) and a ways to go before this is culturally accepted as the norm. As more people start offering it, and more centres set up, I’m sure it’ll all seem perfectly normal. Doctors are just about happy to recommend pilates for people with back issues, so I’m sure the acceptance of corrective exercise can’t be far off.

…If we could have something akin to your college sport set-ups in the uk, teaching movement patterns and athleticism at an early age it’d be a dream!! The thought of a college or school having an S&C coach is absolutely laughable. (…In fact - that said, a lot of top flight sports clubs don’t have one!)[/quote]

yeah, I’ve certainly been amazed at the differences between the college/uni facilities out here compared to back at home. Fair dues to Leeds Uni, in the last 6 months that I was there they had a S&C coach, young guy that was very good at what he taught.

I was in contact with the S&C coach from Bristol rugby and he gave some good advice for getting fitter to referee at the higher levels (what I’m doing now). I was in LA reffing at an event that the big colleges attend and was blown away by the support staff that Cal Berkley brought with them, including a whole bunch of different foods and drinks. I was waiting for them to whip out some foam rollers or bands after the game, but they didn’t go that far!

Hopefully things will keep going well for you, especially in the current climate.

Hey all. Hope you had a good weekend.

DrStU: Ah, sorry old fruit - I forgot you were a brit, and I kinda answer that question as if I was talking to a US-ian person; My bad. Thanks for the good wishes.

krayon: Hi mate. Well the interesting thing about S&C provision for sport in this country is that when you’re an Olympic prospect, you get everything, for free (boooyah). The downside is that if you aren’t a Talent ID’d hopeful you basically get nothing. And by nothing, you need to understand that I mean literally NOTHING. I can’t even begin to describe to you the current level of understanding/implementation of S&C & sport coaching.

with that in mind, the way I see our role is that we help the people who aspire to make it to the top echelons, and when they do get identified as talent then they’ll receive what we do from their sporting governing body instead.

So, to answer your question, yes we’ve ‘got’ some aspiring commonwealth, international or potential 2016 hopefuls, but we don’t get a boost from 2012 directly. We’re increasingly doing coach education for squads though, so things are changing. For example 10 days ago we did a session with some grass-roots athletics coaches, funded by england athletics, to educate the coaches on injury risks in their athletes, how to spot it and what S&C/ prehab (if that’s a word) techniques can be used to help prevent.

I think that’s a great example of a proactve governing body acting to change the status quo.