The Omniathlete Blog

Power is the most desirable quality in sport. It can be the difference maker at the elite level and a massive competitive advantage at every level below it. For too long there has been a myth that power cannot be trained, either you have it or you don't. That myth costs athlete’s development time they will never get back.

Isometric training builds tendon stiffness; plyometric training builds the muscle stiffness that uses it. Danny Lum on programming both across a season.

In professional football, the relationship between squad availability and competitive outcomes is well documented. Teams that maintain a healthy, available squad through the final stages of a competition consistently give themselves better conditions to perform. High injury burden correlates with underperformance across a season, and the effect is particularly evident during congested fixture periods.

Sport science has a recurring habit of giving new names to ideas that already exist. A concept that has been discussed and applied for years reappears under a fresh label, acquires momentum through conference talks and social media, and is presented as though it were a discovery rather than a restatement. The most recent case is microdosing.

What is readiness, and from which observations is it actually inferred, given that a single autonomic signal does not provide it? The answer is less convenient than a single number, but it is more consistent with how the organism behaves. Readiness is best treated as a property of the whole system, estimated from several converging sources rather than read directly from one indicator.

Recovery, like loading, should be a deliberate process with physiological targets. And the most important place to start is not the muscle. It is the brain. The brain consumes over 20% of the body's total energy at any given moment. Roughly 50% of that is dedicated to oculomotor function and visual processing. These are not abstract statistics — they carry direct implications for how we think about fatigue, fuel delivery, and the recovery strategies we apply.

Heart rate variability (HRV) has become a widely adopted tool in sport science and athlete monitoring, often interpreted as a straightforward indicator of recovery status. In many applied settings, higher HRV values are assumed to reflect better recovery, greater readiness, and a more favourable autonomic state. Conversely, lower HRV values are frequently interpreted as signs of fatigue, stress, or insufficient recovery.

HRV is not a magical window into the entire autonomic nervous system, nor a universal indicator of stress or fatigue. It is a specific cardiac signal, reflecting how the heart is being regulated at a given moment. And if we want HRV to remain a meaningful tool in sport, we need to move beyond outdated concepts and adopt a more accurate, nuanced understanding of what the signal actually represents.

Force plates have become one of the most valuable tools in modern performance environments. What used to be confined to biomechanics labs is now part of daily monitoring in gyms, clinics, and training centres. Coaches and clinicians increasingly rely on objective force‑time data to complement their own judgement—whether they’re tracking neuromuscular readiness, managing return‑to‑play progressions, or simply trying to understand how an athlete produces force and absorbs energ

In recent years, the conversation around exercise specificity has drifted toward a narrow and often superficial interpretation: if an exercise looks like the sport, then it must be specific. This trend has become particularly visible in sprint training, where isometric holds in “sprint‑like” positions are frequently promoted as highly specific tools for both training and testing.

Human movement is not simply the product of muscular contractions or joint mechanics. It emerges from a dynamic interplay between the central nervous system (CNS) and the autonomic nervous system (ANS), where cognition, emotion, and physiology converge to shape how an athlete prepares, executes, and adapts movement. If we want to optimize performance beyond biomechanics, we have to engage with how the body regulates its own internal state.

In the elite environment, strength training isn’t an optional add‑on; it’s a non‑negotiable pillar of performance. Treating the weight room as secondary to the pitch reflects a deep misunderstanding of modern sports science. This isn’t about random lifting sessions — it’s about building a system where every rep has a purpose and contributes to what happens on match day.

In contemporary sport, the word “recovery” is sometimes used so casually that it has almost lost its meaning. Athletes and practitioners repeat that recovery is essential, yet the practical interpretation often collapses into a narrow set of routines—usually a foam roller, a massage gun, or a cold plunge. This reductionist view is incompatible with the complexity of human physiology.

Given the intense repetitive stress of competition, the wear and tear of chronic pathologies, and the increasing physical demands on young athletes, isometrics in all forms are essential for both development and durability. Far from being "static" in progress, isometric work is a powerful driver for transferring strength into sport-specific dynamic movements.

Static, constrained movement screening tests like the FMS are built on outdated assumptions about motor control and movement quality. By ignoring variability, degeneracy, and the role of constraints, they fail to capture the essence of athletic movement. Worse, they risk misleading practitioners into overvaluing appearance over function.

If you are serious about integrating force plates and timing gates into one coherent workflow, Strength By Numbers provides a connected solution through the AxIT performance platform.

For decades, the fields of sports science and medicine have operated under a reductionist paradigm. We've often viewed the human body as a collection of parts. However, a growing body of evidence and a shift toward dynamical systems theory suggest that this perspective may be incomplete. This article explores the concept of movement systems, how movement patterns emerge through the interaction of complex constraints, and why "movement solutions" are more important than "ideal

Current evidence suggests that the hamstrings function primarily as an eccentric energy-absorbing brake during the late-swing phase, necessary to decelerate the lower limb and manage loads that exceed isometric capacity. However, the presence of long tendons and specific architectures in muscles like the BFlh ensures that tendon contributions and spring-like behavior are also vital. The issue of hamstring behavior remains complex and multifactorial.

In the competitive world of sports, athletes are constantly seeking new ways to gain an edge and elevate their performance. Neurosonic’s innovative technology provides a scientifically-backed approach to recovery, focusing on three essential pillars: enhancing sleep, managing stress, and boosting metabolism.

How many times we've heard about force absorption within the strength and conditioning industry? Usually, when the expression "force absorption" is being used, the intent is either to describe the process of attenuating the impact during foot strike or the neuromuscular capability to handle and manage the amount of forces produced during a given movement. However, if we want to properly employ biomechanics in our own language we should be aware that force absorption does not