Will Heffernan is the Director for Strength and Conditioning within Informed Performance.

His coaching history began with the Australian Institute of Sport, and today he has over 18 years of experience  working with and for various sporting organisations and a diverse range of athletes in numerous countries from club level up to and including Olympic and World Championship competitors.

Now based solely in Ireland, he has had the good fortune to work with many teams and hundreds of athletes in a wide range of sports.   Will aided Olympians Darren Sutherland, David Gillick and Derval O’Rourke in their ascent.

Will has developed the strength and conditioning programmes for a diversity of teams such as St Mary’s College Rugby in the AIL, DCU Saints in the National Basketball League, and 3 Rock Rovers in the National Hockey League. Will has also worked extensively with GAA teams  Na Fianna, St Jude’s and St Bridgid’s and assisted all three teams in making the finals of the Dublin Football Championship.

Will continues working with many athletes in a wide variety of sports, both as teams and at the individual level.  Recently,Will has taken interest in the growing sport of MMA as both a strength and conditioning coach and also as a tough competitor.

We’ll put a proper link and explanation for this up on the main page for those that don’t stumble across my blog but essentially this is a modified spider test or 150 test if you are familiar with those.

You can see how the test is conducted in the video…essentially it is 6 30 second efforts with 30 seconds recovery between efforts. In each effort you try to get as far as you can…our turf is essentially a 10m square…the distance between each cone is 5m…I’m sure you can work it out from there.

What I am looking for is essentially 3 things:

1. I am looking at the first effort…I want to see how fast and powerful you are…I guarantee the best athletes will get the furthest…the athletes that are the fastest and most agile…obviously…so this effort just measures that for all to see.
2. I am looking at the rate of fatigue between efforts….as in what the drop off is…or how well you just sustain your effort.
3. I am looking at the total distance covered….what your total work capacity at the highest level is like.

What we also do is to strap the heart rate monitor on….so we can see in each test just what the effort takes out of the athlete doing it…here’s Darcy’s heart rate profile.

The next time this test is conducted we’ll be able to sync and overlay the video of this test with his next one and also sync up and compare the heart rate profile.

As for this test…well done Darcy. He did this test directly after completing his strength testing. He’s made improvements from his first day testing here. His skinfolds are down from 82mm to 45mm his bench has stayed at 115kg which at around 80kg is already above what I look for. His Pull Ups are up from 11 reps to 14 reps, Push Ups up from 56 reps to 66 reps in 60 seconds, Inverted Rows from 31 reps to 40 reps in 60 seconds and his Trap Bar from 170kg to 180kg. He was a good athlete when he got there…he’s a better athlete now.

…can you spot it this week?

The first person outside of Ireland who reads the blog who comments on what mistake I made gets a free membership in IP for the rest of this month.

Anyone that can count that is?

I asked him to do 3 bouts of 3x3min rounds…5 minutes recovery between bouts and 1 minute recovery between bouts….and what did I get? Well you can see for yourself.

Posting this here for no other reason than so I can show Kelly her heart rate data from her session today.

This was C2…with some enforced variation…due to working in with St Oliver Plunkett’s team conditioning session on the second prowler block.

What you are looking at is this:

Marker 2-3 = Prowler Push – 60kg x 18 times

Max Heart Rate = 175bpm

Average Heart Rate = 165bpm

Marker 3-4 = 5 min recovery with an average heart rate of 128bpm

Marker 4-5 = Box Jump, Pull Up, Push Up – 14 circuits

Max Heart Rate = 177bpm

Average Heart Rate = 163bpm

Marker 5-6 = 5 min recovery with an average heart rate of 129bpm

Marker 6-7 = Prowler Push – 60kg x 10 times (10mins but mixed with GAA guys)

Max Heart Rate = 173bpm

Average Heart Rate = 159bpm

Marker 7-8 = 5 min recovery with an average heart rate of 132bpm

Marker 8-9 = Potato Sack Squat (24kg), Double Push Press (8kg ea hand), Inverted rows – 7 circuits

Max Heart Rate = 163bpm

Average Heart Rate = 149bpm

My comments:

I copied the details from Kelly’s training diary on the forum and I posted it here because I am so bad at internets that I don’t know how else to link an image into the forum without posting it here first.

Kelly is a Muay Thai fighter…it was a good session…she pumped out 18 pushes in 10 mins on here first block which means…we’re adding more weight next session.

The first work block was a good one…the heart rates are where I want them for this type of session…this is an example of ‘cardio’ with weights…heart rates don’t lie. The heart rate response is similar to sprinting up and backs with the prowler and you don’t need to move more than three steps in any direction to do any of the exercises in the block…we’ll be talking more about this at the seminar on the weekend.

The second prowler block was easier because she had to do it with the St O’P lads.

The last strength block was a bit off…not sure whether she was knackered or whether it wasn’t hard enough or she was just taking a doss…I’m sure I’ll find out…good session overall though 1 hour and 5 minutes with an average heart rate of around 150bpm.