INTERVIEW
When I was an athlete,
performance analysis was me remembering to ask my mum to tape my race so I could watch it afterwards
CASE STUDY Athlete profiling: gymnastics T
he English Institute of Sport (EIS) sport science and medical team, working with British Gymnastics, has built an athlete profiling
system to help inform individualised performance plans as well as collect a breadth of data they hope will inform their work over future Olympic cycles. “We’ve been screening athletes for
years,” says EIS head of sport science and medicine for British Gymnastics, Louise Fawcett. “However, what we’ve been working towards over the past cycle is a profiling process, giving coaches and athletes immediate feedback and information but also storing data which could help inform work we do in four, eight, 12 years.” EIS physiotherapist Simon Spencer, who has worked closely with the team on rehabilitation and profiling, explains what profiling aims to give to the programme. “Profiling provides an opportunity to
identify intrinsic risk factors that may predispose an athlete to injury, the ability to establish potential links between the physical characteristics of athletes and injuries they sustain, and individualised performance targets for return to play following injury.” The process involves athletes being put through a series of tests arranged by
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EIS practitioners working in medicine, strength and conditioning, physiotherapy and performance nutrition as well as performance analysis. The results are then fed back to athletes and their coaches within 24/48 hours, something the team says is vital in giving athletes a picture of where they are right now – as opposed to weeks or months down the line. Spencer then reviews the data in an attempt to identify potential performance benchmarks before a more detailed meeting is held between sport science and medical staff and national coaches. These meetings help establish the significance of the data collected, potential links to performance and what work is required to achieve the agreed benchmarks. “We’re beginning to understand what
physical abilities underpin elite gymnastic performance,” explains Spencer. “Some physical qualities help identify athletic competency and robustness and are capped at an acceptable level – once they are achieved, further improvements are unlikely to result in performance gains. Other qualities are directly linked to performance output where on-going development is an important part of the gymnast’s overall training plan.”
I fell in the semi final at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, I was injured for a large part of the 1988 season and therefore didn’t get to go back to the Olympics in 1992. I came fifth in the Olympic trials in 1992, which prompted me to retire and take up rugby. As a Welshman, I’d always had a
yearning to play rugby and had played as a teenager. I knew at that stage that I’d no longer be able to represent Great Britain at the highest level and at 29, it was a question of now or never, so I decided to throw my lot in with my local club, Cardiff.
What was the highlight of your rugby career? Playing for Wales. In 1994 we played France at home, after beating Scotland and Ireland. I scored the try that sealed the game against France and we went on to play the grand slam decider against England. All these years later, people still come up to me to talk about that game.
What did you do next? I made my final appearance against England in 1998, then worked as a broadcaster for three or four years. I worked for ITV, Channel Four and British Eurosport as an athletics commentator and rugby pundit. I joined the BBC as head of sport in 2001 and went on to work for the BBC in various roles, including head of internal communication, until I joined the EIS in 2010.
sportsmanagement.co.uk issue 4 2014 © Cybertrek 2014
PHOTO: BRITISH GYMNASTICS
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