FEATURE: S & C IN SWIMMING UNFOLLOWING THE ‘TRENDS’ SPORT HEALTH’S JORDEN Most of us believe that there are ebbs and flows within life. MERRILEES SPOKE WITH This belief can be applied to SCOTT DICKINSON, THE a sports or game context where one team has an advantage, and NEW NATIONAL LEAD the other team working hard to wrangle OF STRENGTH AND that momentum back. CONDITIONING FOR As a discipline, strength and conditioning SWIMMING AUSTRALIA, experiences these very same ebbs and flows in relation to trends. TO FIND OUT HOW HE NEGOTIATES NEW “There are always new ‘trends’ in Throughout his career, Dickinson has strength and conditioning; new products,seen numerous trends in strength and TRENDS WITHIN THE new philosophies and systems. You canconditioning come and go over the years. FIELD OF STRENGTH see them being spruiked on every social media channel you can think of. According to Dickinson, injury prevention AND CONDITIONING technology, for example, has seen a “Most of them aren’t in fact, new andmassive push in recent years, along AND FINDS PRACTICAL many of them do not belong within with motor learning theory. APPLICATIONS TO HELP a high-performance framework,” Dickinson explained. “At one point in time, it was all about the AUSTRALIA’S SWIMMING Olympic lifts. Then apparently, Olympic ATHLETES ACHIEVE Scott Dickinson’s role as National lifting became too dangerous and we Lead of Strength and Conditioning shouldn’t do it at all, so it became about SUCCESS. at Swimming Australia, means he is ‘firing the glutes’, ‘activating the core’ or strategically placed to provide leadership‘functional training’ and more recently, in the adoption of these trends and there has been ongoing debates about provide hands-on coaching support foraxial loading, motor learning theory and swimmers. This support extends to bothinjury prevention strategies. home environments (an athlete’s training squad for instance) and also camp or“Training theories can be extremely travel situations as required. polarising, and, in my opinion, we should refrain from absolutes and be open to Scott also provides support and the discussion and merits of each. Just mentoring to the various strength because something worked in the past and conditioning coaches, along withwith one athlete, does not mean it will swimming coaches who work within work again in the same way, or work Swimming Australia’s network. with another athlete,” Dickinson said. 20 VOLUME 36 • ISSUE 3 2018