Episode 1 - Introducing the Nervous SystemThis episode comes with a public safety announcement- the human nervous system is a pretty complex piece of hardware; the exact workings of which the scientific community still doesn’t completely understand. Consequently, George and Matt attempt to walk the tightrope balance between providing you with sufficient biological knowledge that you can understand the rest of this chapter in context, whilst still giving practical advice that you can implement directly into your own training.The episode starts out with Matt providing a brief ‘machine gun style’ overview of the structure of the human nervous system. If this is something you are interested in, then definitely head over to youtube (or your local library!) and spend some time getting familiar with this stuff- particularly if you’re a coach, it does really help to have a solid underpinning of knowledge in this area. The late Canadian sprints coach Charlie Francis epitomised how understanding the nervous system can provide significant advantage in the athletic realm. George then gets into what this might look like in practice. He explains how the heart can be used for both input and output mechanisms, respectively. We can prescribe varying stimuli to the heart, to elicit a particular nervous system response. Yet we can also monitor the function of the heart, giving vital biofeedback and providing a glimpse into the inner workings of the nervous system. As ever, George ties all this theory back to anecdotes from various athletes he has coached over the years.

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Please see below for a few resources, linked to today’s episode, that you might find useful:

An example educational video, explaining the structure of the nervous system in more depth (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeo19WVQ47w)Charlie Francis Training System by Charlie Francis (https://www.amazon.com/Charlie-Francis-Training-System-ebook/dp/B008ZK0WR8)Chapter 14 of the NSCA’s Essentials of Sports Science (https://www.nsca.com/certification/cpss/essentials-of-sport-science/)