Do Work at COC Son!

Last weekend it was time to do work up at Robert Dos Remedios' Cougar Strength & Conditioning Clinic. And though the cast of Sex in the City weren't there in person to do battling ropes, they were in our thoughts.

This was Dos's 11th year putting on his clinic, which raises money to buy equipment for the sports programs of College of the Canyons, and he always gets a great turnout. This year might have been the biggest yet. Sadly it might be the last, for budgetary and political reasons - why we love beaurocracy.

This year's lineup of speakers included Mike Wunsch of Alwyn & Rachel Cosgrove's Results Fitness Mike talked about the hows and whys of their programming strategy for their clients. And since Results is consistently noted as one of the top gyms in America, like EF Hutton smart people listen.

Their philosophy comes down to doing a great assessment on each client, then addressing corrective work first, then hard strength training to get results. *note* NO cardio, unless their goal is to compete in an endurance event.

Next up was Sean Skahan, strength & conditioning coach of the Anaheim Ducks. Sean detailed the in-season gym training of this NHL players, which boils down to some no nonsense, low volume heavy work in the gym to keep them strong on the ice and to reduce injury rates.

What I found fascinating was the Sean's training wasn't all that different in a larger sense from the 45 year old soccer mom that Mike trains at Results. The intensity and volume differ, but the movement patterns tend to be very similar. No hopping around on bosu balls and wobble boards and all that silly crap. Something to think about.

Next up was Pete Koch and Jim Kovich MD.

Both Pete and Jim are former NFL players now working in the health field. Jim is a geneticist working on issues involving the connections between genetic variation and incidence of injury. In other words, they are developing tests to individualize training, so that if a person has some genetic predisposition to weak ACL, then that can be identified early and addressed in training.

Needless to say it was fascinating to get a glimpse at the future of training science.

Pete talked about how one might take that research and apply it to young athletes.

Pete, a rather large gentlemen, is also best known for his role as Swede in the classic Clintwood film Heartbreak Ridge.

Swede, say something charming to the man.


Finally it was time to get in the gym and get work done.
Dos set up a variety of timed density circuits of the variety he has his athletes do. Everything from 5 seconds work with 25 seconds rest, 15:15, 30:30 40:20, up to 10 or more minutes of continuous work.

And believe me, everyone got worked.
These are some of Dos's volleyball girls doing some density work. No ellipticals or treadmills for these athletes.



Thanks again Dos for the fantastic information, and of course the post-seminar beers!