Offseason Fitness Tests a Collegiate Basketball Strength Coach Should Choose to Predict In-Season Perfomance Based on Sex

Quantification of athletic performance via analysis of scores of off-season fitness tests has become an essential part of the modern strength and conditioning coach (SCC). Player Efficiency Rating (PER) and Efficiency index (EFF) are two of the most used in-season basketball performance metrics in the US. We collected data from male and female basketball players of a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) program. Based on sex, we examined a) if unadjusted PER (uPER) and EFF reflect different amounts of information and b) which fitness tests predict those two indices more accurately. Our results showed lower means and less variability of the fitness tests scores in women than men. The correlation between uPER and EFF in men was moderate and strong in women. In men, no strong correlation was found between any fitness test and EFF, while full court sprint was strongly correlated with uPER. In women, strong correlations were detected between a) the T-drill and EFF and b) the foul court sprint, the vertical jump, and the T-drill and uPER. The collegiate SCCs should consider that off-season scores of a) the foul court drill may predict uPER more accurately in both men and women and b) the T-drill may predict both EFF and uPER more precisely in women.

Hitting New Heights

This chapter looks at the changes in Bob Thomas's law career in 1984. The partners in the firm of Casey, Krippner, and Callahan had decided to amicably divide. Before the split was completed, they asked Thomas in which direction he would like to go. Having established a relationship with Jack Callahan the longest, he decided to join Callahan's new office, which essentially remained next door to Casey and Krippner. Meanwhile, the Chicago Bears moved preseason practices to Platteville, Wisconsin, for July 1984 after having been in Lake Forest since 1975. Along with Thomas's regular workouts, Bears strength coach Clyde Emrich had Thomas doing “Russian shock jumping” for the first time to help continue Thomas's resurgence.

New Movement Practices: A Foucauldian Learning Community to Disrupt Technologies of Discipline

Sociologists of sport and coaching have repeatedly drawn upon the theoretical tools of Michel Foucault to map and critique the negative effects of coaches’ use of disciplinary practices. Three SCCs and two coach developers participated in multiple learning community meetings interrogating Foucault’s concepts to understand how power moves, create new, less disciplinary practices, and address the problems produced by too much discipline. The findings present new conceptual tools to train and move differently by disrupting disciplinary practices:spasmodic tempo training,atemporal training,variable geographic training,variable intra-geographic training,fluid and fragmented periodization,explorative coaching, andstrength coach as sage. We call for an appreciation of poststructural informed sport coaching and the development of a discursive sociology of sport coaching praxis.