Allan Macdonald

Please note: I recently found some old articles from my old physicalengineering blog. I wrote many of these articles in 2015-16. I am not sure if I would agree with the contents in their entirety; however I am posting the articles to help keep track of my previous perspectives on certain topics. I hope you find them interesting, thought provoking, or if nothing else slightly comical.

August 13, 2016 Allan Macdonald

Summary in case you’re short on time

• Gaining clarity and defining what being strong, powerful and what moving well looks like in the sport specific tasks is essential – put some clear definitions in place.
• The Super 10 Strength movements make up all exercises in developmental athlete’s training programme.
• For each of the Super 10 movements there is a stability exercise, strength exercise and speed exercise.
• To minimize noise stick to either a stability session, strength session or speed session, mixing these up can dilute the training effect.
• Keep the weight room heavy, fast and precise.
• Movement variation is a key tool to increase combat athlete strength, we’d rather have an athlete press 100kg 20 different ways than press 110kg only 1 way.
• Speed training must have some sort of measure of intent, whether it’s jump height or ball toss distance.
• Frontal & transverse planes are predominantly used for the athletes who need more stability; sagittal plane exercises from a large part of the strength exercises; and we do explosive work in every direction.

Exercise Selection for Strength & Power Training is a popular topic for martial artists, such as Judo athletes and Mixed Martial Arts fighters, so this article will cover some of my thoughts on how I design content for these sports. I’ve written the information specifically for Junior and intermediate fighters and in a language that coaches and athletes can understand, so hopefully the sport science police won’t be too harsh on me for not including too much jargon and going into every specific muscular action of each exercise! Also it goes beyond the scope of this article to go into loading percentages, repetition and volume schemes, loading progressions and periodisation schemes – grab any Mike Stone or Greg Haff Textbook and that’ll do a much better job than I can.

Before we begin looking at how to improve our fighters physically it is really important we gain clarity around what being physically Strong and Powerful looks like in the actual sporting movements, what sporting tasks we need to be strong and powerful for, and create some objective criteria to assess our athlete against in the specific task of their sport. When observing athletes in combat sports I break Strength & Power into 2 primary categories of 1. Movement Precision and 2. Strength & Length; then within both these categories there are several subcategories.

Movement Precision

Movement Precision is made up of a combination of Balance, Coordination and Mechanics. Movement take the raw strength and speed that the muscle is capable of and synchronising this to the sport specific tasks. One of my favourite Frans Bosch quotes, which I’ve paraphrased from memory is “At some point it is not important which instrument in the orchestra is playing the loudest, but rather how are all the instruments synchronised to produce a beautiful sound” and this to me is where movement training fits it. In fighters, the way in which they apply force their opponents is more important that the total force which is being produced, and it is our job of making the making the muscles strong and making the sports movements precise.   As Connor McGregor would say:

Below I’ve given three examples of observables we would see which would allow us to identify if an athlete has good movement precision, there are obviously lots however this will give a good insight into the process.

Balance: A fighter with good balance will be able to keep their hips over their base of support while their arms and legs are striking, kicking and grappling their opponent.

Coordination: A coordinated Judoka will display consistently fluid/smooth rhythm, speed & tempo during gripping movement, during throwing and during transitions into groundwork.

Mechanics: A Judoka with good mechanics will demonstrate every repetition of a throw looks consistently the same as the previous repetition, even when using different variations of the throw, speeds of throw, from different start positions, different sequences and opponents.

Strength & Length

When we discuss length we are specifically taking about mobility, which is the range of movement around a joint and a muscle; combined with having strength produced quickly enough for the desired task outcome; and with control and precision of movement throughout this range.

The first element of Strength & Length is Mobility which can be seen by the athlete having required range of movement, and control within that range, to execute the skill with the desired mechanics. For example, if a MMA fighter can front kick to their opponent’s head without having to compromise their own stance balance, trunk or head position they have adequate hip and lower leg range for the task.

In Judo, it’s important to have around +70degrees of shoulder internal rotation for throws such as Uchimata so that we can maintain trunk contact with our opponent and not have to compromise lack of shoulder range by dropping our chest – this could be one observable. If we want to look at mobility of the shoulder for a throw such as Uchimata we may measure GIRD or simply ensure athletes have shoulder rotation to allow them to touch their hands behind their back with one arm over and one arm under, on both left and right arms – this would may be a second observable.

The second element of Strength & Length is Strength. When we discuss strength for combat athletes, firstly are taking about having enough overall “strength” to endure demands of being repeatedly kicked, punches, thrown, pushed, pulled, twisted and so on without sustaining soft tissue injuries such as torn muscles and tendons; we could call this robustness or physical resilience.

Next we will look at what Strength in specific tasks look like so we can distinguish strong athletes from those who need to be stronger. For example, an athlete who is strong can keep their hands on the opponents JudoGi with their desired grip during gripping exchanges, when throwing and in groundwork. Another observable of upper body and hand strength would be that the arm and hand movements are fluid enough, and forceful enough so that they can open and close the distance with their partner on their terms.

This example of opening and closing space is a useful one for gaining clarity around the common problem where an athlete might have very impressive pushing & pulling strength in the gym, for example 1.5x bodyweight Bench Press and 1.5x Chin Up yet they cannot open and close the space against an opponent of much lesser gym strength. Our athlete is “generally strong” meaning their pushing and pull muscles can absorb and produce a lot of force. Make no mistake this athlete is “strong” in a general sense which gives them the potential to be strong in any pushing and pulling tasks in any sport, but they are not displaying in in their grappling yet so this needs to be a priority to “transfer” this strength from the weight room to the mat! To use my racing driver analogy again, if you upgrade all the components of your car so that its speed increases from 100mph to 150mph, but you fail to upgrade the skill of the driver to use this in cornering, breaking and accelerating the car will not go any faster! Essentially strength is task specific.

The third component of Strength & Length is Explosive Strength. This could be demonstrated by blasting through opponent’s resistance during throws and continue their momentum through their opponent to the ground. Another example of explosive strength would be that a Judo athlete can kill the momentum of their opponent’s attacks, such as reversing or changing their opponent’s movement direction, so the attack is nullified. At this point it is also useful to point out the negative version of the observable i.e. what we see if they do not have explosive strength, as this might help us gain further clarity on exactly what we must wee; in this case we would see an athlete accelerating in a slow speed and crumpling when meeting their opponent’s resistance as if hitting a solid wall.

The final component of Strength & Length would be Muscular Endurance, the ability to continue to produce forceful movements over the duration of a contest. An example of good muscular endurance in MMA would be that a fighter who can maintain control of their opponent’s limbs in groundwork, whether attacking or defending. For example, squeezing onto their opponent’s leg to prevent a mount being mounted or when attacking in the mount position delivering a high frequency of punches to damage and submit opponent. Again, a negative example of an athlete who does not have good muscular endurance could be that they lose posture after several minutes of the contest, or perhaps the athlete begins to move their arms and legs differently than earlier in the contest, for example their techniques deviate from the desired technical model, and they are overall moving much slower and “heavier”.

Hopefully this gives some sort of insight into how I use observables from the sport, alongside my Deterministic Modelling for Judo, to build a picture of what a strong & powerful athlete should look like and identify what needs developing physically.

Exercise Selection

Now to get into the specifics of the programs that are prescribed. From my perspective there are two primary routes to prescribing S&C content. The first way is to view the athlete in their sport and then carry out assessments to inform training content to bring up what physical qualities they need but do not have. For example, in weightlifting having an athlete only clean & jerk and snatch and then building assistance exercises around them based on the technical errors/weaknesses that eventually emerge.  The big benefit of this is that there is no wasted content, or extra training “fluff” and everything prescribed in the program has a distinct purpose and change is easily measureable.  The second method which I believe is more effective, particular if you get access to developmental athletes, is to prescribe all fundamental movements to ensure there are no weakness in the athlete’s movement armory and most importantly to allow “super strength” to emerge through the training process. I fully concede that to begin with there may be some additional content which might not be of much use to the athlete, particularly if they are naturally good at some movements so on first look there is some “fluff”. However, I believe it is better to put the checks in place early in their career to ensure no movements are untrained and at the very least it aids to raising their work capacity and during a time in their career when sport-specific volume is increasing, repetition of sport-specific movements is increasing giving them different movement variations to prevent overuse, in my experience is very effective. Below are the Super 10 Movements I select from to prescribe content to the athlete.

1. Throwing and Catching
2. Carrying & Crawling (locomotive)
3. Jumping & Landing
4. Squatting
5. Lunging & 1-Leg Squatting
6. Hip Hinging
7. Upper body Pushing
8. Upper body Pulling
9. Bracing
10. Rotating

Based on an initial movement screen, and importantly observing them in their sport and chatting to the coach, I group athletes into three categories. The categories are those that are wobbly & weak; those that are stable and need strength; and finally those that are strong but need to be speedy. Within each of the Super 10 Movement categories we have a stability versions of the movement, strength versions of the movement and speed/explosive versions of the movements.  We also have versions of each of the movements in the sagittal, frontal and transverse planes.  As stated in Warm Up Evolution athletes perform these fundamental movements in all warm ups, in all plane and we manipulate key variables such as the speed, surface, type of muscle contraction to help make these movement patterns very consistent in any situation.

Throwing & Catching: Judo is a sport all about throwing, so it makes sense to get better at accelerating and throwing different objects, at different speeds, in different directions. I typically use both vertical medicine ball throws for height and horizontal ball throws for distance, we measure distances or try to hit the roof with a given weight to drive intent. During Judo throws to the front, such as Uchimata, it’s essential to produce vertical force quickly to get your partner’s hips and feet up off the ground so that you are in control of their bodyweight. We have 2,3,5,6,7,8,9 & 15kg Medicine balls which we throw and try to hit the roof with, this helps give the athlete feedback to make sure they are synching up their vertical movement. Horizontal throws are used to help throws to the rear, such as Ouchi Gari, and double-leg take downs to aid projecting the hips forwards at high speed. For catching, usually the coaches play some sort of handball/rugby game after the warm up so this is taken care of there or in their gripping sessions catching sleeves.

Carrying & Crawling: For athletes who are wobbly I use overhead walks, such as using the water ball walking over low hurdles, forwards and backwards lunges and sideways movements. For stronger, more solid athletes I’ll use the atlas stones or the heavy swiss ball filled with water, they carry them in front to help posture and also on one shoulder to further increase the frontal load when walking. For crawling I use all the common exercises like bear crawls, crab walks and will put a tennis ball peanut on the lower back to help improve stability in the wobbly athletes and a weight disc or partner surfing on their back for the strong athletes.

Jumping & Landing: Most of the time I will use Slow Stretch Shortening (SSC) Jumps as fast ground contact time is not a limiting factor in judo, this is exaggerated even more by the fact the Judo mats are somewhat soft so have quite a bit of give in them. They do simple squat jumps, lateral jumps, jumps with twists for the wobbly athletes and progress to single leg landings then finally single leg take off’s – focus is always on landing mechanics and being quiet. Stronger athletes will use loaded jump squats, often with 30-50% of their maximum back squat and more often than not from a pause or off pins to try to make it as ballistic and concentric as possible. We’ll often use a cheap jump mat to drive intent on these jumps. Similarly, the stronger athletes use broad jumps with a band around the hips and broomstick on the shoulders to exaggerate hip projection and force being produced at the hips as the arms won’t be assisting on the Judo mat – these get measured. They’ll do a small amount of fast SSC bouncing on different surfaces to increase tendon stiffness and force transmission from muscle to skeleton, sometimes on the harder gym floor and sometimes on the crash mat, or even on the mat with socks. Since there isn’t a much, if any, fast SSC in judo something as simple as skipping gives an overload so 1-2 times per week we add this into warm ups and practice double unders and single leg skipping.

Squats: For the complete beginners I use Goblet Squat to a ball to get correct mechanics and then quickly progress to Overhead Squats. I prefer to use a close grip Overhead Squat as this helps improve thoracic extension strength and Latissimus Dorsi length which are important for correct shoulder mechanics on throws such as morote seoi nage. Once athletes get to bodyweight or appear to have lost their wobbles I switch them to front squats to again develop postural strength and then eventually back squats. They’ll use movement variation as a method of overload so they will use chains for a few week, bands, and even half squats and squats off pins if they really need to increase their strength potential. This works well with women as sometimes they need to feel confident with 2.2x bodyweight on their back for a set of 5 half squats before they have the belief to full squat 1.75x bodyweight for a single. For athletes who are strong, stable and need more explosiveness they use high band tension with low bar weight. The bands we have mean that they are unloaded at the bottom so it is only bar weight, and then we put lots of band tension at the top so that the bands pull them down quicker than normal straight bar load they need to accelerate up as hard as possible or they won’t get up. I’ve found this helps massively with intent because if its 50kg at the bottom and 120kg at the top they’ve got to drive as hard as possible…this makes accelerating through an opponent just a habit.

Lunges and 1-Leg work: For beginners they start with pistol squats in bare feet using bands around their hips to help lift them up. Being able to do an unassisted pistol squats means they have to be able to dorsiflex their ankle (get the knee in front of the toes) and this is critical for creating a forwards leaning shin angle during throwing. Athletes need their shins pointing in the direction they’re going to explode and for techniques to the rear the sharper the shin angle the more speed and force and greater chance of throwing. While working on pistol squats the wobbly athletes will also be doing split squats with dumbells and then progress this to step back lunges holding dumbells, and finally overhead step back lunges. The stronger athletes use Bulgarian split squats and look to elevate the rear leg to increase load on the support/front leg, vary these with barbell on front or back to increase load even further. For the strong and stable athletes they’ll use 1-leg box jumps to limit single leg landing forces, then progress to split squat jumps from the floor. They do these split squat jumps for height but also side to side and rotating to be explosive in all three planes. I have used barbell split squats with bands to increase speed but mostly I try to keep the fast stuff really fast and the heavy stuff really heavy when it comes to single leg work.

Hip Hinge: For beginners I use kettlebell romanian deadlift with a vertical shin and slight knee bend which stays constant. Using the kettlebell allows the athlete to push the kettlebell between their legs and displace the hips backwards which creates the hinging movement, and I’ll usually get them sanding with their heels on a line and tell them to put the kettlebell down behind the line. Once the have got this movement progress to clean grip romanian deadlift and then normal clean deadlift from the floor – always with a straight back. This nonsense around “well they get put in bad positions in the ring so need to train in bad positions in the gym” is poor critical thinking. Yes when the wind blows the support beams of a skyscraper flex and bend, but that doesn’t mean you should build the tower with bend beams!!! The straighter the beams are prior to loading the more tolerance they will have when subject to torque forces and it is the same with the spine. We train with a rigid, neutral spine to overload the hip extensor muscles which help throwing to the rear; bending the spine reduces this force and increases shear forces in the back. Yes, if all you do is go to the gym crack on lifting with that turtle back, for those who do judo 7-10 sessions per week or about 20hours specific combat training get enough shear through their discs in “awkward and bad” positions during sparring, so lets practice moving well in the weight room like our explosive, injury free buddies in weightlifting! For the strong stable athlete’s they use hang cleans or kettlebell swings with a band tied around the handle while standing on it. This makes the load increase throughout the swing which reduces the momentum generated at the start of the swing carrying the kettlebell upwards. This means that the is more force required as the hips approach extension which is different to the clean as typically the bar reaches peak velocity just prior to full extension…at least in most non-elite Olympic liftings. I love this exercise as it forces full extension and projection of the hips and attaching more bands with the same load of kettlebell will promote a high rate of force development with a simple, not complex exercise so that athlete can extend the hips with maximum intent and force. On saying this we still Hang Clean as the absolute load is higher and so is the rate of force development at heavier loads is higher. Just a note, MMA athletes need to watch cleans as there is already a lot of compression on the wrists during punching and wrist impingement is common in the catch/front rack position. Clean pulls are great but we since we can’t measure bar speed or RoFD on a force plate I choose other exercises which seem better for developing intent. Judo players who do morote seoi nage need to watch their elbow valgus in the catch position, big volumes of morote seoi on the mat would probably mean I’d take out cleans, similarly those with poor shoulder internal and external rotation we will pick something else until we improve this, if we can improve it!

Pushing: Push Ups, they start with these as coaches love throwing them into sessions or as punishments so juniors better get good at them early because junior athletes can’t tell them time, or maybe choose not too…either way they’ll be doing lots! They do normal push ups, slider or typewriter push ups for frontal stability and also split stance with one arm higher than the other for some rotational stability. Once an athlete can do 10 push ups they progress to Overhead barbell press for pushing strength. I’m not the biggest fan of bench press for MMA and Judo athletes, the postural benefits and scapular upwards rotation from an overhead press, or the stability and extension range from ring dips outweigh lying on your back, shoulders pinned to the bench trying to shorten the range to lift as much as possible – Olympian and Paralympians can overhead press and ring dip with weight, boys who go to get a Friday pump on can lie on their backs bench press! On saying this some of the boys still like to do it and I’m fine with this but most seniors won’t. For explosive pushing they do medicine ball shot putts for distance, medicine ball chest pass for distance or clap push ups, anything ballistic and which allows acceleration and minimizes acceleration. The really heavy guys may use close grip speed bench press with large band tension at the top with minimal at the bottom – the close grip increases the range they have to produce force over and makes the force vector more similar to pushing against an opponent.

Pulling: Inverted Rows on the TRX are mission number one to emphasize keeping the shoulder blades down, tucked into the athlete’s back pockets. Then progress to bent over barbell row which is great for horizontal pulling, they always start with the barbell below the knee caps around mid-shin to exaggerate pulling at right angles to the trunk. They will also do weighted chin ups, palms facing the athlete as this is great for strengthening the external shoulder rotators and helps increase Latissimus Dorsi length through the eccentric action. They also do Ring chin ups and externally rotate as pulling up and then internally rotate when lowering eccentrically. For explosive pulling do ballistic bent over row starting from the floor so it is concentric only, and also starting from a dead hang on each repetition to develop explosive strength from pre-tension. They also do clap pull ups, but our favorite is arms only rope climbs for speed with long arm pulls not short ones.

Bracing: I use the term “nipple to knees” (only with the over 18’s) as some sort of indicator as to where the “trunk” is and that during trunk bracing this region should be static – like and iron rod! For sagittal bracing firstly they start off with the basic front plank and work up to 3minutes with bodyweight, and do the same for the frontal plane bracing using the side plank. For anti-rotational bracing they start with a kneeling paloff press using a light band or the keiser machine usually for 10repetitions each side, 3 sets. Kneeling shortens the torque arm so the rotation forces are lower than when standing. Once an athlete can complete the 3minute planks and are able to stay solid on the paloff press, and as long as they can do 10push ups, progress to barbell rollouts. Begin just holding the push up position with hands on the bar and then focus on moving the bar 1inch out and then 1inch back. Do these in full push up position and not on the knees as this encourages hinging at the hip, whereas we want a straight line from the tip of the toes to the tip of their nose! For frontal bracing strength we make things slightly more reactive by lying side on in the glute ham developer and doing disc pulses out in a straight line to rapidly load the lateral trunk. For anti-rotational strength I do not program too much as there is a lot of this going on in judo, particularly on the ground when trying to turn over and not be turned over.

Rotation: Rotation is obviously critical in a combat sports whether striking, kicking or throwing. In all warm ups I programme hip and shoulder dissociation work, which is basically being able to twist in the spine so separate the shoulders and hips. We do lots of thoracic around the worlds, yoga reaches to the sky, scorpions and bent knee fallouts to the side. In the weight room I take the wobbly athletes and put them in a kneeling split stance as this blocks the hips and allows them to feel what it is like to separate hips and shoulder rotation. I have them attach a band to the rack and rotate away to lengthen the band, making sure the leg which is closest to the rack in the one with the knee down, so that they are rotating over the far away knee which blocks the hips from rotating. Often I will manually help the athlete get a few more degrees rotation and then they will have to hold the new position and slowly rotate back to the start, this is eccentric strengthen and quickly gives them strength in this new range. Once they are able to stay strong and have good rotational range I progress to landmines for rotational strength as well as “hammer” plate rotations with straight arms as if throwing an Olympic hammer, I stole this off Martin Bingisser the hammer thrower. Finally, for rotational speed they do side medicine ball tosses into the ball, however now they use slam balls since the balls kept splitting. Occasionally they’ll play medicine ball tennis in the dojo in teams of 3-4 and I constrain the athletes to only using forwards facing side tosses, or sideward facing side tosses to change the range they have to accelerate the ball. I also change the load of the ball every few points. Although not strictly trunk rotation they do medicine, or slam ball slams. We get the athletes to stand as tall as they can, up on their tip toes so they are right at their end of range and then they try to smash the ball through the floor as if throwing a big stone through ice below them. More of often than not we pair glute ham upwards facing disc pulses for trunk isometric rate of force development with slam ball slams for trunk dynamic rate of force development and this gets positive feedback from the athletes.

Below are some examples of the programmes which are being completed by our development athletes.

To finish off with I’ve put some bulletpoints below with some of my other thought process behind programme design, most are my opinion and have been formed by watching combat athletes from different disciplines and guide my current way of thinking

• In our initial screening we movement screen the athletes on all the fundamental movements and in all planes and this helps inform whether they do the stability, strength or speed version of a movement. More often than not we have them almost always start exclusively on the stability movements and we’ll use carrots to get them to buy into the process so they can progress onto the strength variations.
• More often than not strength versions of exercises are in the sagittal plane as I feel it is too difficult to get a heavy enough load to develop maximum force using frontal or transverse dominant exercises. On saying this, I frequently avoid sagittal movements in circuits and opt for loaded frontal and transverse variations over a range of loads and velocities to build movement precision in these planes when fatigued.
• Variation of Movements: I would prefer that the combat athletes I support can squat 150kg twenty different ways than 160kg only one way. I believe that being strong in a wide variety of a particular movement outweighs being slightly stronger in one specific version of a movement. It is difficult with weight cutting and +15 competitions per year, alongside +100days of sparring training camps to get most male fighters much more than 2.5x Bodyweight for deadlift, 2x Bodyweight for squat and 1.6x Bodyweight for Chin Ups. Rather than hammering for years and years to get to a 2.6x Deadlift or 1.7x Chin Up I would rather make some calculated variation in a lift, for example altering the the force curve of a lift using chains to make the athlete strong in a slightly different variation of that movement. Just one more point on variation, most S&C coaches now are touting the benefits of sampling different sports at a young age to give the athlete many “motor patterns” yet stick exclusively to power cleans, back squats, deadlifts and bench press as the primary strength exercise and vary only the loads to get adaptation – sure bench press strength goes up but does transferrable pressing strength increase to the same extent? I doubt it but maybe I am wrong.
• I only programme one version of a movement per session, for example one push and one pull; gone are the days of bench press, overhead press and push ups being in the same session.
• I believe that it is chronic exposure to heavy loading, and chronic exposure to explosive movements over a period of months and years which eventually allows transfer to be realised – yes we do have “special developmental exercises” however these too need to be performed over time to realise the full benefit. A 17year old who is exposed to simple, heavy loading and explosive movements for the next 10years, will mean they have 10years of practicing their sport-specific skills with continually improving physical capacities. If you take a weak 28year old and in 6months get their deadlift to improve by 80kg the chances are they will still be weak as a child on the mat or in the ring as they have not had years of practicing their craft with those physical skills. Of course “special exercises” will accelerate transfer and realising this in the sport skill but in my experience it doesn’t seem to every work that way as the old skill patterns, with the old force and velocity profiles seem too cemented to change.
• We don’t have the budget at the moment to buy any force-velocity measuring kit, however we make really good use of the measuring tape. All broad jumps are done against the measuring tape, usually in a group of athletes so they are competitive. We have a dodgy jump mat which we use for vertical jumps, we don’t use this for any data collection but purely having the athlete try to beat their previous effort drives their intent.
• I find that challenging athlete intent to be quick and explosive is probably more important that then exact exercise you decide, and competitions in training are essential to getting maximum intent in this work. Whether it’s a medicine ball chest throw for distance or medicine ball shot putt for distance, I’m most interested in what the athlete is trying to win at and what exercise they are looking like they are going maximum on.  For this reason I favor simplicity of explosive movements over complex ones.
• For the most part I keep the variation of the movement the same for all the athletes in the strength group, all the athletes in the speed group and all the athletes in the stability group.  It makes it much easier to coach and enhance the athlete’s learning by watching others performing the same movement as them, and I can ask them questions to accelerate this skill learning process. As I say multiple times each day “For us to be World Class we need to be doing the basics better than everyone else!”
• We try to keep the weight room for lifting heavy and lifting fast as combat sports work a lot in the mid-range of force and mid-range of speed curves so to drive an adaptation in the body we try to give a clear signal with very little noise i.e. throw this light ball as fast and as far as possible! A lot of the stability based work is just hidden in warm ups, everyone does these warm ups as I do believe practicing the fundamentals frequently benefits even the most advanced athlete.

I hope the above gives some insight into how we select exercises for our developmental athletes and gives some ideas to take back to your own environment.

Cheers

Allan