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Creating an environment for

success

Drew and Hayley Harrison

Our story….of training athletes in Limerick since 1995

• Our backgrounds

• Our athletes

• Our idea of the total training environment, incorporating our philosophy, values and overall approach to coaching and developing athletic performance

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“You don’t need eyes to see, you need vision”

Faithless

Our Journey (so far)

GLASGOW

LIMERICK

SALFORD

LEEDS BOLTON

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About Limerick

Limerick…. A five line poem

• Limerick, city and county in Mid-West of Ireland

• 42% of Limerick’s population aged under 30.

• A University City (15,000 Students)

Limerick County Population 195K (4%)

Greater Dublin

Pop 1.9m

(40%)

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Greater Glasgow Pop 1.2m

Greater Manchester Pop 2.8m

Athletics in UK

• Athletics Ranked #2 participation sport in UK 1.96m participants

• The UK Sporting Preferences Survey : Placed athletics at the top with 20.9 per cent of the points total, ahead of football on 17.9 per cent.

• Popularity of British Athletes illustrated by the fact that athletes have won far more BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards than practitioners of any other sport.

• Athletics is popular and well-funded in UK

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Sport in Ireland

• Soccer is the most played team sport in Ireland.

• Gaelic football, hurling, golf, aerobics, cycling, swimming and billiards/snooker are the other sporting activities with the highest levels of playing participation in the Republic of Ireland.

• Athletics is truly a minority sport in Ireland

Spending on Coaching

• Sport Ireland expenditure on coaching

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Athletes and evolution

Our first Olympic athlete

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The ideal or... total training environment

You need… unlimited facilities and access….

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You need… unlimited access to expert sports science support

You need…physiotherapy, sports podiatry, corrective exercise

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You need all-year round conditioning

You need... expert, event specific, highly qualified coaching

With excellent training partners

...and 1 to 1 coaching when required

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Perfect weather all year round

You need good weather to develop fast movement?

So the perfect training environment…

• Unlimited facilities and access

– Track: Indoor & outdoor, Gym, Unlimited specialised equipment

• Unlimited access to supports:

– Medical & Physio; Sports Science; Massage; Nutrition; 5* living space; perfect training partners

• Expert Coaching

– Highly qualified; experienced; 1 to 1

• Perfect weather all year round

– 20-25C, no rain, wind < +2.0 m/s

X

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So we can’t have perfection…

So we work with what we have and try to optimise it..

What does this require?

The total training environment

COACHING

CONDITIONING

FACILITIES

TECHNIQUE

SUPPORT SERVICES

SUPPORTED BY OUR CORE VALUES

ATHLETE Optimal

performance

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COACHING The squad core values start with the coaches Mission Statement:

• To assist every member of the squad to achieve their athletics potential.

Primary Value:

• While athletics is an individual sport, individual improvement and success is achieved through group support, cohesion and respect for each other.

• We are Drug free squad (comply with WADA)

• Every squad member should put 100% effort into every training session on any given day.

• Each individual has something ‘to offer’ other squad members (technical ability, speed, endurance…).

• Each squad member is to be respected and encouraged to achieve their potential irrespective of ability (by both coaches and squad members)

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• This is a training group. You are not in competition with each other during training

• On competition day, compete to the best of your ability

• Be gracious in both success and defeat.

• You will always be representing someone

– behave in a manner which allows the people you represent to have pride in you, but always remember whoever you are competing for, your conduct reflects on you and your squad.

• Never abuse the honour of wearing your national vest!

• While the squad is ‘led’ by us, the true strength of the squad comes from within, we don’t have to be best friends with everyone, but we do expect you to ‘be there’ for each other.

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HCH 2016

Being an athlete is about more than just athletics

Athletics is a serious thing, but it needs to be serious fun too

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The quality of Training is important

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TECHNIQUE

• Technical model (shared vision)..

– Contrasting strengths of HH DH

• General (principles of technique)

• Specificity (individual adaptations) example different physiques

• We tend to use drills and practises to help optimise technique

• The practises need to be specific to nature of the athletic event

The simplified model

• Our technical model is based on Research

• The primary emphasis on the action of the pelvis, hips and legs

– each leg moves alternately (anti-phasic) from hip-knee-ankle extension to hip-knee- ankle flexion

• This model assumes that the arms play a subordinate, counterbalancing role in sprinting.

– little emphasis is placed on correction of arm actions unless they are demonstrably destabilising the overall movement of the sprinter.

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First Sprint-related movement: AB

A B

Second Sprint-related movement: BC

B C

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Muscle activations during sprinting (Novacheck 1998)

Hamstring Quiet period

Hamstrings are “quiet” during early –mid-swing phase

Higashihara et al 2017

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• Drills and practises for technique development are related to movements and muscle actions in sprinting

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http://www.hudl.com/technique/video/view/he2DysMs?e=7361495

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CONDITIONING ( & priorities)

• Speed development (This is THE top priority)

– Optimal Technique and Elastic strength

• Body preparation (warm up) needs to be specific

• Speed endurance – High Intensity Interval Training

• Acceleration (technique and resistance running)

• Strength ( for acceleration: emphasise high rate of force generation and link to technique)

• Flexibility ( maintain normal range of movement – event related)

Conditioning: Body Preparation

Not just warm up

– Needs to be progressive, dynamic & skill-related

– Prevention of injuries?

– Avoid latest trends (hard to achieve)

• Foam rollers?

• Gluteal activation exercises? (No EMG!)

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Conditioning: Speed development

• Optimal technique should be retained at speed.

• Develop correct movement at slower speeds and add speed later

– developed through event specific drills and exercises

Conditioning: Speed endurance

Speed endurance: via High intensity Interval training (HIIT)

– HIIT appears in various ways:

– Obeys Harrison’s law of relativity:

– Time is relative: the rate of time during recovery is proportional

to how fast you ran the previous rep.

Endurance Speed

Duration Recovery

Recovery Duration

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Conditioning: Acceleration

• Acceleration - technique and resistance running, short sprints and hill sprints

Conditioning: Strength for performance

• Strength is vitally important

– Event related strength (for acceleration and emphasises high speed force generation)

– Linked to movement and muscle actions

– General strength and conditioning is also important but a lower priority. (Low velocity and isometric exercises not performance related)

– Transfer of strength to speed is crucial (complex training relate to F-V curve)

– Specialist S&C needs to be integrated under coaching

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Training decisions derived from research

Conditioning: Flexibility

Should maintain normal range of movement and be event related

Limit long static stretching immediately before high intensity work

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Sports Science Support

• Sports science support

– Has been provided in-house through student projects and MSc & PhD projects

– Typically biomechanical and linked to practitioners

• Sports Psychology ( integral part of coaching)

– Don’t over think it !

• Performance monitoring

Performance monitoring support

• Performance monitoring

– This has not always been of high quality

– Jump mats, RSI, maximum strength tests, 30 m sprints and FMS or similar

– Not event relevant

– Based on correlation (moderate and possibly spurious)

– Ongoing monitoring a new development for us delivered by UL Beo and linked to specific requirements

Drop jump Fast SSC CT <250 ms

CMJ Slow SSC CT >250 ms

Power clean Slow SSC CT >> 250 ms

Hopping SL CT <200 ms

Sprinting CT 100 ms

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Sport Medicine/Rehab Support

• Massage (we think highly over-rated)

– Systematic review in Sports Medicine

• Rehabilitation and injury prevention:

– Tom Barr has AAI support

• Corrective exercise and Strength & Conditioning managed directly through coaches (linked with Rehab)

– Rio and London were examples of very good practice

Nutrition support

• Nutrition

– Important but sometimes influenced by quasi-science

– Special diets not suitable for all (e.g. Gluten-free)

– Attitude to supplements is challenging (athlete mind set)

– Use of photo food diary

– Change in habits is challenging balance versus preference

– Nutrition advice needs to link to true energy demands

– Sports Nutrition for Rugby will not be the same as for athletes

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Lifestyle support

• Location of living and training (training village)

– Scholarship and accommodation provides ideal location

– 80 -90% of high performance athletes develop their talent while in 3rd level education.

– UL Campus provides excellent location

• Lifestyle management (career development, Education)

– High performance development and academic study an excellent fit

– Flexibility of study facilitate the dual career pathway

– The coach as an educator

Our athletes as graduates

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Facilities

• Important but we need to work with what we have

– Need to have minimum requirements

• Access & Timing

– Need to be able to access facilities when athletes and coaches are available (Scheduling)

• Quality and usage

– Problem throughout Ireland: we design specialised facilities and use them for something else (specialised facilities ≠ commercial return)

Challenges

• Facilities and access

• Small population pool and minority status

• Advent of Specialists impacting on training programme (S&C; Physio; Massage; Sports Science; Technical; Medical; Psychology..)

• Marginalisation of the personal coach (lead coach)

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Challenges

• Impact of Pseudo-Science

• Performance monitoring (not specific)

• Programme complexity for many event disciplines and performance levels

• Some challenges can be turned to advantages

– Mixing of athletes from different disciplines

– In-house monitoring

– Alternative facilities

Changing athlete behaviour

• How do we change athlete behaviour?

– We don’t.. They learn to embrace the core values

– Training behaviour is generally self-regulated by individuals within the squad and the group as a whole

– Athletes develop into leaders over time

– They learn to regulate the demands of competition through cooperation

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Take-home messages

• Look at what you have (not what you don’t have) and optimise it

• Take control of the environment where you and your athletes operate (don’t let ‘specialists/experts’ dictate how your athletes train)

• Don’t worry if your Total Training Environment looks different to others– it should do: it’s yours!

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and

leave a trail. RW Emerson

Drew & Hayley