This week’s guest on the Pacey Performance Podcast is John Wagle, Director of Performance Science and Player Development at the Kansas City Royals in Major League Baseball. Previously, he earned his PhD at East Tennessee State University, worked at DePaul University as a strength and conditioning coach, and spent some time prior to that as a baseball coach. John is here to talk about eccentric training – a subject he covered extensively in the PhD..

Eccentric training exists on a continuum, encompassing a large variety of methods from tempo training, to flywheel inertial training, accenuated eccentric training (AEL) and playometric training. John's PhD focused on AEL so discusses why it is specifically beneficial. If you’d like to know the timings and potential exercise selection that can bring greater muscle strength and recovery even to ‘lower end’ athletes, then this week’s podcast is for you.

Topics this week:

• The benefits of eccentric training
• Why eccentric training has been gaining in popularity
• The downsides of eccentric training to be wary of
• How to start focusing on eccentric training
• How coaches can develop their use of flywheel training
• Developing training programmes to lead into AEL (accentuated eccentric loading)
• Simple exercises anyone can do which involve AEL
• How ‘low end’ athletes can benefit from AEL
• When to apply plyometrics in an AEL programme
• Maintaining fitness levels while a team is ‘on the road’