BOX 1: EXAMPLES OF MISDIRECTED ACTIVITIES WITHIN PRESENT- DAY UK ATHLETICS

n Young female jump athletes repeatedly landing on an indoor track surface from a 3-foot platform into an erect knee valgus posture during plyometric drills

n Athletes performing both types of dead-lift, collapsing into lumbar flexion at one and a half times their bodyweight on the bar

n Forced-toe touching by athletes sitting into forward flexion while a colleague pushes on their shoulders

n Under-16 boys performing eighteen 100-metre sprints (!) n Sprint athletes performing slow heavy lifts n Repetitive jumping drills being performed on indoor track surfaces

n Young developing athletes increasing their training volume from a few times per week to every day.

medicine for most modern athletics teams – that is, outside the “elite” umbrella. Herein lies the first issue. As exercise and health professionals we study, train and work for years, developing and researching ways in which to help prevent the incidence of injury, as well as the means to treat and rehabilitate them, subsequently improving performance output. Yet this training seems exclusive

to us. We know what information these notions are based on, yet those who guide the young people we eventually see in our clinics and performance labs do not seem to be privy to this necessary information as readily as we are. In the club, the coach is the gatekeeper of knowledge about conditioning, preparation, technique analysis and basic biomechanics and psychology, yet his or her training in all these areas is often basic and fragmented with self-directed study. They are the ones who decide whether an athlete needs sports massage, sports rehabilitation, physiotherapy or strength and conditioning. Yet if you look at the education structure that is currently in place, there are failings within this system.

This is not a statement of superiority – that we are better or that we are right. It is an observation made at first-hand that might answer many questions about why some of our athletes simply aren’t good enough. The science behind coaching individuals within grass-roots athletics is often horrifyingly lacking. To get some idea of what’s going on nowadays, see Box 1. Although there may be some kind of justification for these things to

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happen within some contexts, they seem to be commonplace events. Please do not misconstrue what I am saying here. I believe in hard and honest work, but I also believe that science must govern the things we do in sport, and it is we who must help convey this science to those who need to apply it, and we must do this appropriately.

Basic principles of sports science Let’s consider the SAID principle (which translates as: specific adaptation to imposed demand) and Wolff’s law (which states that bones change their shape and structure in response to any stresses acting on them). Both principles relate to the development of bone tissue, and state that the degree of bone development is proportional to the load imposed on it (1,2). As long as we load our neuromusculoskeletal system appropriately then it will adapt to any demands on it. We know about appropriate loads, but do the coaches? In my opinion some, many of whom are at the grass-roots level of athletics, do not.

SAID PRINCIPLE

This stands for “specific adaptation to imposed demand” and it simply means that your body’s physiology adapts to what your body does. In other words, if you train as a sprinter you become more accustomed to power-based activities.

How does science knowledge help

in training? Let’s take a 100-metre sprint athlete. He or she runs one maximal distance, attempting to attain perfection from the start, accelerating through the drive phase and on to maximum speed, maintaining it for as long as possible across the line. Is there any sense in completing multiple low-intensity runs with a short recovery? A knowledge of science will help us determine this. And it will also help if we know which bodily system is at play here, and what kind of athlete we are developing by doing this. It certainly helps to know that

the physiological system involved in sprint and power events is the phosphocreatine system (a fast-acting energy-creating system supplemented by anaerobic processes in the body) and that supplying this rapidly depleted energy takes at least 4 minutes. That’s 4 minutes to recover, which is useful to know.

With respect to strength and conditioning, the development of strength and power requires 80% of a maximal load to be applied in order to elicit a response (2,3). The body’s DNA will eventually “re-develop” certain carrier signals that cause production of particular muscle fibre types, but this takes years to develop (2). This leads to the question, at what point is it appropriate to train sprint athletes, sub-maximally and repetitively, when

HORRIFYINGLY LACKING.

THE SCIENCE BEHIND COACHING INDIVIDUALS WITHIN GRASS ROOTS ATHLETICS IS

sportEX dynamics 2010;45(Jul):7-11