England Athletics team up with Quintic…
March 4th, 2010 | Athletics, Education, Quintic Video SoftwareEngland Athletics have an exclusive offer from Quintic for licensed athletics coaches…
England Athletics have teamed up with Quintic to offer fantastic discounts for licensed coaches on their sports analysis software. To obtain this discount you must be an UKA licensed coach with up to date CRB check.
The options are:
Quintic Sports – just £195
Quintic Coaching – just £300.00
Quintic Biomechanics – just £475.00
For more information on how to order, please contact your local Club & Coach Support Officer – find their contact details here. Coaches on our National Coach Development Programme may qualify for a larger discount – contact your National Coach Mentor.
For further details please visit : http://www.englandathletics.org
WELCOME to www.QuinticNetball.com
November 25th, 2009 | Education, Netball, Quintic Video SoftwareWELCOME to QuinticNetball.com – an interactive web product which has been developed by Quintic Consultancy to bring you Netball Coaching Made Easy based on the book by Alex Spring. Netball Coaching Made Easy was written by Alex Spring (see personal history link) specifically to break down and illustrate coaching drills and correct netball techniques.
Whether you are a teacher, coach or player (or all 3) Netball Coaching Made Easy is the interactive resource for you – it contains schemes of work and lesson plans for High Fives, Year 5 and 6 plus 1 hour lesson plans for Year 7, 8 and 9 and many more skills and drills to aid your coaching repertoire – and it’s quite inexpensive.
This downloadable product brings Alex’s book to life with videos of top level netball players demonstrating the various coaching drills and the correct skill techniques. Seeing is believing because sight enhances understanding and memory. This is an invaluable coaching tool which can help both coach and player to analyse technique in fine detail.
It caters for players of all standards, giving instruction on how to execute the drills with accompanying video. It contains great coaching games that enhance netball awareness, maximise activity, create fun and stimulate interest.
Quintic Netball Player
QuinticNetball allows video footage of a player’s technique to be viewed and compared through the extra features of the inclusive Quintic Netball Player Software. The Quintic Netball Player and over 80 netball videos can be simply purchased and downloaded for you to use on your computer. The software enables you to view all of the training and practice videos in full PAL (720 x 576) resolution. In addition, frame by frame advance, slow motion, full speed, voice overs, full screen option, resizable window, zoom in & out, export jpeg still images, stopwatch, key frame markers…
No player executes every drill or technique perfectly every time, however QuinticNetball enables any player of any level to use the Netball videos and Alex Spring’s instruction to analyse and improve technique and skills. The best players in the world never stop working to improve their game. QuinticNetball is the latest technology to help you improve yours.
QuinticNetball – Coaching Made Easy can be purchased for £49.95 from the following page : www.quinticnetball.com/purchase.asp Along with the Quintic Netball Player and the 80 videos, you will also recieve a PDF document which includes screen shots of the practices, written coaching points and common errors for each activity within the Warm ups, Basic Skills and Game Skills sections of the website.
Example for QuinticNetball : Chapter 1 – Warm Ups
In Chapter 1, we shall be looking at Warm Ups. I’ve sectioned these into
• Static warm ups with a ball
• Active warm ups without a ball
• Active warm ups with a ball AND
• Relays with a ball
Static Warms ups with a ball – Practice 1 : The Clock
The set Up : In pairs standing 2m a par, Player A is the feeder and Player b the worker .
The Practice : The feeder passes the ball to Player B who holds both hands up at the 12 o’clock position. Player B snatches the ball into the chest and feeds the pass back to the feeder. The practice continues with Player B changing the position of her arms from 1pm round an imaginary clock. The feeder is to concentrate on feeding an accurate pass to Player B’s hands so Player B does not have to move her arms to cleanly catch the ball.
Teaching Points :
The feeder needs to:-
• Step into the pass, transferring their weight from the back to the front foot
• Using a chest pass, position their hands in a W shape behind the ball
• Push through the ball following through to where the ball is to go
The worker needs to
• Stand with feet hip distance apart with soft knees which will ensure they are well balanced throughout the practice
• Fingers are soft and outstretched with the palms of the hands facing the feeder
• Worker is reach for the ball at full extension and snatch the ball into the chest
Common errors to look out for in this practice are:-
• The feeder over stretching the worker putting pressure on pass
• The feeder not stepping into the pass therefore not practicing the correct technique for a chest pass
• The worker waiting for the ball to come to them rather than reaching for the ball and snatching it in
Quintic Q4E latest case studies…
June 26th, 2009 | Education, Quintic Video SoftwareQuintic 4 Education case studies continues to go from strength to strength. Currently there are 19 indivudaul case studies that can be used in conjunction with Quintic Biomechanics, Coaching and Sports software. The case studies can be used across a wide selection of subjects and levels, allowing interactive examples and questions to be given whilst staying within the requirements of the National Curriculum.
Over 300 videos can be chosen from the vast selection available with the Quintic software to demonstrate a topic and provide a practical application of theoretical concepts.
Below is a list of example case studies and the subject, topic and year group/level they are available for. All the case studies are supported by FREE downloads, including videos and excel data spreadsheets:
- Impulse
- Performance Analysis – Swimming
- Coefficient of Restitution
- Power
- Screening of Athletes
- Cycle Ergometer
- Newton’s Cradle – Conservation of Momentum and Energy
- Performance Analysis – Shot Put
- Pythagoras
- Cricket Batting 1
- Cricket Batting 2
- Acceleration
- Equations of Motion
- Moment of Inertia
- Projectile Motion
- Velocity
- Relative Velocity
- Cricket Bowling 1
- Simple Harmonic Motion
Please visit Quintic 4 Education Case Studies : www.quintic.com/quinac/education.htm
ProStance : the most balanced argument yet for the optimum swing…
August 21st, 2008 | Biomechanics Consultancy, Education, Golf Biomechanics, Putting Biomechanics, Quintic Video SoftwareQuintic Consultancy Ltd is proud to be apart of the latest golf training aid to hit the market! ProStance is based on many years of biomechanical research carried out at Quintic.
Good balance is essential to powerful and consistent golf shots, putts, chips, and full swings. The human body makes compensations both at address and during the swing to give us the impression we are in balance. Biomechanical research carried out at Quintic has found that as golfers, we don’t always know where our weight is truly positioned! We may think that are weight is distributed evenly and ready to hit the golf ball, however, it isn’t until we use biomechanical analyse, in particular force platforms that the true answer is revealed. Even some of the world’s best golfers think they are doing one thing, but actually are doing something else.
The ProStance is borne out many years data collection, research, coaching experiences and ultimately feedback from golfers and coaches at all levels about the product. Research into putting and full swing biomechanics has highlighted the need for the golfer to be stable at address and dynamically balanced during the swing. The ProStance is the latest training aid to enable to golfer to help achieve this. It is simple to use, yet the results are instant and the benefits are a more consistent and powerful strike.
Dr Paul Hurrion MD of Quintic Consultancy, now brings to the consumer coaching aids market the ProStance ™ balance aid, and as one might expect, it’s a winner! ProStance is a product that forces you to become very aware of balance, it’s simple, reliable and supremely efficient.
A key collaborator with Hurrion on perfecting the ProStance is teaching pro Stewart Craig. The two professionals are prefect foils for each other in this. Hurrion’s podiatric work with companies like Hi-Tec and Titleist Performance Institute highlighted the need for ProStance in the first place. Craig’s daily contact with club and county players helped provide a working template that would fit into the training settings of every golfer. The perspective that most pros look at a student’s swing invariably from the waist up was the key to ensuring the benefits of ProStance were not just meaningful to golfers at Tour standard, but to commonplace technique needs as well.
“In my experience the majority of coaching professionals address faults with compensations, explains Craig. However, most of the root problems in the golf swing are due to static or dynamic balance issues. What happens below the waist causes the problems above the waist.”
With the intellectual ability of the partnership now making a real difference to the development of the ProStance, it still took several years to bring to market-readiness. The final results are for every golfer to try and use on a daily basis.
Enjoy the ProStance. A consistent, powerful golf swing starts with a stable set-up and dynamic balance during the swing. ProStance gives you instant feedback during every swing.
Enjoy the results… for more information please visit www.pro-stance.com
“The ProStance is a great tool for any golfer at any level. Balance is the key to the golf swing as it enables the body to make a controlled and repeatable golf swing. Without the correct balance, your mechanics are a series of compensatory movements. The ProStance helps build balance and stability for every part of the game from putting, chipping to the full swing…”
Padraig Harrington
“I would never have believed that so many faults in the golf swing and putting stroke emanate from poor balance in the set up position. The ProStance has simplified my golf swing and helped me make more powerful, efficient and most of all consistent swings…”
Paul McGinley
“The ProStance is cutting edge and simplicity all in one… It will enhance your golfing ability immediately, due to your increases body awareness…”
Bradley Dredge
“I use the product daily to confirm and maintain my posture at address…”
Richard Finch
“I first met Dr Paul Hurrion in 2005 and have unquestionable belief in his ability as a putting coach. The ProStance encompasses a lot of his principles and teachings in a training aid. Without the correct balance, your putting mechanics are a series of compensatory movement. Manipulation of the club head does not stand up to pressure… “
Philip Archer
“The importance of balance in golf is often underestimated. The research of Dr Paul Hurrion (and Stewart Craig) highlights the influence that balance has on reducing compensatory swing adjustments in turn producing more consistency and power for the golfer. The ProStance enables the golfer to establish and feel the correct balance both at address and throughout the golf swing in every area of the game. This training aid is a must for those who want to seriously improve their game.”
Alison Nicholas
Biomechanics & Balance…
December 17th, 2007 | Education, Quintic Video Software
One of the most naturally gifted golfers I ever coached owed his considerable ability to a childhood spent playing table tennis. To most, there would be no link here, but because I was encountering him in a biomechanical context I understood just how much he owed to his table-tennis playing and how much it informed his golf.
And it was all down to balance…
If an athlete can achieve equilibrium he or she has an inordinate advantage over every competitor that does not. And the likelihood is around 90% of children don’t have it. But they can learn, and quickly too.
For goalkeepers or cricketers in the slips and wicketkeepers static balance is key. Dynamic balance comes into play during the bowling action, for instance, where the bowler needs to have all forces in the same plane and moving in the same direction.
David Beckham’s missed penalty in the World Cup was due purely to lack of balance. To kick accurately, you have to have a stable left foot as the right foot impacts the ball. Beckham’s foot clearly slipped as he made ball contact and it missed by a mile. Immediately afterwards, you could see him looking down at the ground to see what had gone awry.
But you’d never see Jonny Wilkinson making the same error. Part of his pre-kicking drill is to check where his left foot is planted when he kicks, and if there is uneven ground or another type of irregularity he addresses it first, because he understands how being off -balance would affect the kick.
I give all my Tour golfers extensive balance testing more than anything else because it is really the beginning and end of good putting. If a golfer’s balance is off his putting will suffer. Conversely, once he learns balance, so much else about the mechanics of putting just falls into place.
It is similar for the full swing off the tee. When you watch pro golfers on TV, they hold their finish for what seems like an age, even until after the ball has landed. It’s a conscious finish to ensure they are balanced. If they couldn’t hold the posture it would be due to lack of balance, and they need to be aware of it to correct it for the next drive – or even the next stroke.
Now translate this to the more frequently encountered athletic disciplines in most schools. Gymnastics, basketball, football, cricket, rugby… they all have balance at their core.
Video capture and analysis of body movement can rapidly identify if this is a problem and make it quick to rectify.
Olympic javelin silver medalist Steve Backley made huge progress through addressing his balance: where his back foot landed for the throw – how his forces worked in unison through correct alignment – the motion of his own centre of gravity. Through drills and conditioning, Steve superbly exemplified what we say to encapsulate this crucial aspect of biomechanical performance – effortless power over powerless effort.
Here’s an outstanding exercise I use with elite golfers, athletes from all sports can benefit hugely from this too…
stand on one leg for three minutes. It’s hard. Your ankles know all about it very quickly. It’s about the stability, strength and muscular awareness. Specifically, though, this rapidly develops an awareness of balance through pro-perception, the ability to react to subtle changes in the position of the body’s centre of gravity.
I use pressure platforms and the Quintic video analysis system* to show equilibrium and balance transfer during the golf stroke, but what works very well to show this aspect as well as make people more aware of their balance (or lack of it) during a physical movement, is to have them stand on balance cushions… the immediate action is to make movement feel awkward, but balance and stability follow on very quickly.
If you never used Biomechanics software* for anything other than to improve balance in athletes, I would say you’d have recouped your investment. That’s how crucial it is.
Dr Paul Hurrion
Article in Independent Education Today Magazine : December 2007
Independent Education Today – Basketball & Biomechanics
November 15th, 2007 | Education, Quintic Video Software
The Rugby World Cup Final in Paris was harder for some of us to bear than for others, and under more joyous circumstances would have been an ideal topic for this month’s column. Next month, maybe…
Turning to basketball, then (and why not?) this game’s appeal is on many levels, not least of which is the fact that it can be played all year round. And that’s really why I thought it a good topic for this time of year.
But on a purely biomechanical level, its great appeal is that it’s fast-paced, exciting and can really stretch athletic potential in many directions. While enthusiastic kids who can’t wait to get onto the basketball court will relish the challenge of co-ordinating virtually every joint, limb and muscle group in the body, to see them really flourish you should let them absorb some of the theory, maths and physiological aspects through video comparison and Q&A.
Using interactive video and software systems, children can quickly absorb some quite complex techniques such as boxing-out, laying up and defence, as well as learning the biomechanical differences between pass-shooting, free-throwing, overhead and javelin-passing.
Crucially, though, it’s also very time-efficient for sports coaches, as it relieves them of the burden of devising modules themselves and delivering mechanicals such as video, questionnaire structuring and so forth – leaving more time for one-on-one coaching, perhaps, and fault-fixing.
Structured software packages with video capabilities are very successful at engaging the student’s mind in athletic process, but without filling up the head with too much clutter.
Where a digitization template is included, it’s possible to track digitally the kinetic energy of limbs and muscle groups, quickly quantify the movement in a visual index so that correct musculoskeletal actions can be identified and helped into the muscle memory, while incorrect actions can be rectified. It sounds very bothersome, and it would be if it had to be done manually in each instance, but as it’s been already set up as part of the biomechanical software capability, the coaches’ input is a fraction of what it would have been in the past.
I’ve long been a believer in the importance of bringing sport to life in the classroom, as well as on the sports field. While some of the biomechanical content can be obtuse – and particularly where formulae are used – it’s by using graphics and video that we can take principles out of the abstract and make them real. From a coaching viewpoint, it makes it so much easier (and quicker, we hope) to impart that knowledge. From the student’s viewpoint, the benefits are obvious, in that a deeper knowledge is effectively taught and so much more benefit is derived from the sport.
It’s important to reiterate at this stage, that biomechanics is not a substitute for coaching. It simply analyzes and quantifies what happens to the body and sports equipment during athletic activity.
And while the body’s performance is important, it can also help explain very effectively the finer points of athletic principles by comparing the bounce of different balls – golf, basket, table and cricket balls – to show different dimensions of that performance.
Otherwise, how would you explain to a child for whom physics is not his or her best subject, the all-important Coefficient of Restitution? Discuss…
Dr Paul Hurrion
Article in Independent Education Today Magazine (November 07)
What we learned at school today!
October 1st, 2007 | Biomechanics Consultancy, Education, Quintic Video SoftwareWithout doubt, one of the biggest themes to occupy the mind of anybody involved in childcare or education is fitness – most lately the subject of obesity among the very young is very high profile.
While it proves a great hobby-horse for government ministers and educational commentators, there seems precious little in the way of actual, workable solutions to accompany all the hand-wringing that goes on.
I’ve always been of the belief that sport is vital to a child’s development, and taught correctly at a young age generally makes for higher chances of athletic achievement – even brilliance – later in life. I have no truck with the lobby that says sport is under-funded in Britain. But while that may be true, it isn’t the sole source of our ills in competitive sport on the international stage. I think the way that children are introduced to sport and then coached and taught about it can let them down.
My specialism, Biomechanics, is an in-depth knowledge of the way the body works in an athletic context, and as such it can lead you into the minutest details of musculo-skeletal minutiae… the shorthand for this is, dull, dull, dull!
Sport shouldn’t ever be dull – to watch or to learn. Kids are famously and frequently described as sponges, able to absorb masses of information through natural mental agility and curiosity. Failure to engage these enquiring minds and develop physical proficiency in sports is more at fault, than so-called lack of investment in sport.
Consider this…
Children are great mimics. Their instinct is to copy. So instead of taking a class of unskilled and disengaged kids into a field, throwing them a ball and telling them to get on with it, why not show them how it’s done by showing them video of how Beckham bends it, or how Graeme Hick gets a cricket ball to travel off the bat at incredible speed, or how Jonny Wilkinson spiral kicks a rugby ball… and let them copy it?
The kind of video capture and analysis software techniques used for professional athletes offers young people one enduring advantage when learning to master a sport. By taking theory out of the abstract, showing how the sporting greats do it, encouraging them to emulate it, then marking their progress by comparing video of their own performance as it develops and improves, it actually brings sport to life in the classroom!
I don’t think there is a single better favour you can do for a child who wants to be good at a sport.
Video is a powerful and indispensable tool in showing developing athletes what they should be looking for and how to emulate it.
While this is more about technique, there is the additional benefit of injury prevention – in disciplines like gymnastics knowing the correct way to land, tumble and fall is crucial – in cricket a fast bowler who does not understand correct front foot placement in the delivery stride will develop ankle problems sooner or later.
Sports may be under-funded, but that’s not really the point at debate here. In truth, the UK offers a vast array of sports to the enthusiast willing to learn. And the best way to see as many children as possible realize their potential is by allowing them to look, absorb and copy.
A good technique is a safe technique as well as an efficient one. With skill comes achievement and further enjoyment…
Dr Paul Hurrion
Article in Independent Education Today Magazine (October 07)
