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RAW Barbell Club Podcast Episode 10

The State of Coaching, Sport and Athlete Development

with Peter Upham

In Podcast Episode 10, Rhe and Andy travel to the Sutherland Shire to interview Peter Upham. Peter is the head coach and co-owner of Shire Speed and strength. His gym has produced a diverse range of athletes in both ability levels as well as sports. Notable mentions in weightlifting, Gridiron, and Rugby.

Our conversation varies far and wide but the gist is that we are interested in the development of three things. The coaches, the athletes, and the children that become athletes.

If you are a parent, athlete or coach this will be of interest to you.

RAW Barbell Club Podcast Episode 10

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Coaching

We start the conversation talking about how to become a successful coach. Peter coaches a lot of health professionals, including trainers, coaches, physios and exercise physiologists. Often these athlete-coaches ask for advice on where to go to find information about better training. Peter argues that it’s not as important to look for content, but rather be need driven. If you want to be a better coach you need to ‘acquire’ problems to solve. To be the best you must learn by doing, you need to be coaching to get better. It’s need driven not content driven. In today’s environment there is an abundance of information about coaching and movement. But if you are seriously interested in being a coach you need to care.

We have a brief chat about the state of coaching certs etc. How the system is is set up to build exercise professionals in theory first then experience is how they gather real wisdom.

Sport in Australia

The second major topic we discuss is the state of sport in Australia. Peter explains how he got involved with the Sutherland Seahawks Gridiron team, and how he has helped grow the sport in Australia. Historically Gridiron has had a very low participation level here, and is nowhere near as popular as it is in America. Peter attributes this to the way sport is set up here. A lot of sports here are very participation based, where specificity is not sought after until very late in a child’s development. This is not the case in many countries, where kids are pushed to excel in a single sport early.

The truth is just like Gridiron Weightlifting is not school driven sport. And to draw more similarities we get a lot of refugees from other sports too. We need more trickling down from other sports into weightlifting, when this happens more and more, we will see more generational growth (Parents being weightlifters getting kids into it etc.)

Peter thinks it is unlikely that we’ll see an influx of children in the sport of weightlifting. Unfortunately there are still a lot of parents that don’t see the importance of strength training, as a capacity of fitness. Even though collision sports are much more dangerous than lifting. If we want more athletes in the sport it will have to come from drop-out in other sports. The great thing about weightlifting is that it can be used to develop athletes for other sports, by using it as part of the training. If the athlete then tires of his or her chosen sport. We can come in scoop them up, then they already will have an adequate base to draw from.

There is a lot to get through in this episode, we really struggled to keep it under the 42 or so minutes we took. If you enjoy the podcast help us out by giving us a 5 star review on the i-Tunes!

Thanks for Listening!

Special thanks to the Peter Upham for joining us this week. If you want to find out more about Shire Speed & Strength Check out Peter’s Instagram & Facebook, or his website!