Calibre Performance Coaching

27/10/2026

Couldn’t be there on the night
& a late post as I was away

But a dominant win from Dylan Norman on 17th moving to 13-0,
title shots now long overdue

Great being part of these camps helping give these guys an extra edge physically over their competition. I have been told it shows in between the ropes.

15/09/2026

My exclusive interview with Brainz Magazine | Business, Mindset & Leadership is live:

More is not better. Better is better. Drawing on over 15 years of experience as a personal trainer and strength and conditioning coach, the interview talks about my journey into the industry, explains that sustainable progress relies on smart programming, realistic commitments, and training that improves both performance and quality of life. Explore a pragmatic approach that replaces fleeting fitness trends and grueling routines with intentional movement and lasting results.

Read “Why Fitness Should Fit Your Life, Not Control It – An Interview with Richard Bennett” now. - Calibre Performance Coaching

15/09/2026

Richard Bennett of Calibre Performance Coaching is a Strength & Conditioning Coach and Personal Trainer delivering sessions from Athena Performance, Redditch. He has over 15 years' experience and has trained...

14/09/2026

Training hard up until the week of competition may feel productive. It usually isn’t. By the time you step up to compete in your chosen event, excessive work in the prior couple of weeks only adds fatigue with no real benefit.
This is why we taper. We shed accumulated fatigue whilst holding onto the adaptations you’ve built in the weeks and months before. This means what shows up at the event is the real you, not a tired version of you.
A meta-analysis on tapering, Bosquet et al. (2007), found a clear pattern. Significant performance improvements came from two-week tapers that cut training volume by 41-60%, while keeping intensity and frequency close to normal. Not fewer sessions. Not lighter sessions. Just less total volume across training sessions.
That last part is where so many people get it wrong. Two common mistakes sit at opposite ends of the spectrum. 1) Cutting training too much; excessive rest, dropping sessions, going quiet in the final weeks, and going stale. Sharpness fades, and you show up under-primed. 2) Cutting too little; grinding out hard and heavy sessions right until the last week and never clearing fatigue. Fitter on paper, flatter in reality.
A smarter approach to be optimally prepared is to keep frequency and intensity where they’ve been sitting, but cut the overall volume of work. Instead of detraining, consistent quality work is delivered with intent. Think of a taper as clearing fatigue so what you’ve already built can actually be seen when it is needed.
Peaking isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing the right things, at the right intensity, from exactly far enough out.

11/09/2026

07/09/2026

“Move it with intent” gets said a lot in strength training circles. But, what does it actually mean? and why does it matter?
In the concentric, or lifting phase, where you’re producing force against the load rather than controlling it down, intent is driving as hard and as fast as we can, on every single rep, regardless of what the load allows.
On a lighter weights, that intent shows up as real bar speed. On a heavier sets, the bar might barely move, but the intent to move it fast is still what matters.
Although a simple cue, it’s backed by how the body actually adapts. Research into bar velocity and force production shows us that it’s the intended speed of the concentric, not the load itself, that determines how much of your fast, high-threshold motor unit pool gets recruited. A half arsed concentric contraction under a heavy weight doesn’t train strength the same way a maximally intended one does, even if the weight on the bar is identical.
Reps without true intent leave adaptation on the table.
That’s also why fixed percentages or max lifts don’t always tell the whole story. Your capacity shifts session to session with fatigue, sleep and stress. Research shows even day-to-day 1RM can vary by as much as 18% (Moore & Dorrell, 2020)
A number on a spreadsheet can’t account for this. What can count is the standard you hold every rep to: genuine maximal intent on the concentric, every time, whatever the bar decides to do in response.
You don’t need to track anything to apply this.
You just need to stop treating “intent” as a nice idea and start treating it as an actual mechanism doing much of the work.
Get in touch if you want a programme built around what actually drives adaptation, not just what looks good on paper.

02/09/2026

High velocity
Transferring gym strength to speed with ballistic & plyometric exercises
Low dosages, long rests, high intent

10/08/2026

Can you build strength and your engine at the same time?
Fighters, and most people who train seriously, don’t get to pick one quality. You need to be strong and you need an engine. So the question comes up constantly: does chasing both at once mean you get less of each?
This is the “interference effect”, the idea that endurance training blunts your strength and power gains when done alongside resistance training. It’s a real phenomenon. It’s just a lot more specific than people assume.
Wilson et al. (2012) pooled 21 studies on concurrent training and found it isn’t a flat penalty for combining the two. Strength and hypertrophy outcomes stayed close to resistance training alone. The real interference showed up specifically with running, not cycling, and got worse the more frequent and longer the endurance sessions were. Power took the biggest hit of the three. Modality and dose matter far more than simply “doing both.”
That means the fix isn’t choosing one quality over the other, it’s dosing the endurance side deliberately. Lower-impact modalities (bike, sled, rower) carry less interference than heavy running volume. Keeping conditioning focused rather than long and frequent protects power. And contrary to popular belief, exercise order within a session matters less than people assume, the evidence behind “always lift before you condition” is shakier than the confidence it’s usually said with.
For fighters specifically, this is exactly why your S&C should be built around your sport’s actual demands, not maximum volume of everything. You need the engine your sport requires and the strength to hit, throw, and hold position, not an Ironman base and a powerlifting total layered on top of each other with no plan.
Both qualities are trainable together. It just takes a programme that respects the dose, not a coin flip between them.
Get in touch if you want your strength and conditioning built to work together, not against each other.

04/08/2026

Rep ranges, Rest periods, Exercise order, all variables can make a difference in your training outcomes. “Optimal” volume for hypertrophy is a big variable that gets debated. If you’ve spent hours down that rabbit hole trying to perfect your muscle-building programme, I’ve got good news: for 99% of gym-goers, you’re solving the wrong problem.Here’s the truth, strength and muscle size are tightly linked. Get stronger, and you build muscle. Chase the strength, and the size mostly takes care of itself.
A 2025 study (Marques et al.) tracked lifters through 15 weeks of lower-body training, measuring both muscle growth (via MRI) and strength gains. The finding: muscle growth and strength gains moved together closely. The underlying message: gain strength, and muscle tends to follow. This is why most Olympic Weightlifters have huge thighs.
This relationship doesn’t weaken with experience, it strengthens. The longer you train, the tighter “get stronger” and “get bigger” become the same instruction. Peterson et al. (2005) found much the same in trained athletes, a huge correlation between strength and muscle size.If in doubt, get strong, and you’ll build muscle by default.
Strong is never wrong.
What this looks like in practice: pick a handful of compound lifts. Add weight or reps to them over time, in a sensible rep range. Track your numbers. Be patient. You don’t need to micromanage volume or chase the “perfect” exercise for hypertrophy, progressive overload is doing almost all the work.
Who should be worried about tiny variables of hypertrophy? Bodybuilders and Physique competitors. That’s when fine-tuning volume, exercise selection and technique specifically for optimal hypertrophy starts to earn its keep (bear in mind they will do anything to get there 💉). It’s just not the conversation most people need to be having in year one or two of training, or really ever unless you want to wear a tiny pair of Y-fronts on a stage....
So, if you’re stuck in analysis paralysis over programming minutiae, stop. Get under a bar, get stronger over time, and your physique will change too.Get in touch if you want a programme built around getting you stronger, not more confused.