Category: training

Book, Talent, training

Talent alone is not enough.

 

I just finished reading a very exciting book written by Malcom Gladwell entitled:”Outliers”.

Outliers is a provocative and inspiring book aimed at trying to explain what makes exceptionally successful people. Malcom Gladwell examines everyone, from business giants to scientific geniuses to sports stars. This very interesting book argues that the main reasons behind success in every field are:

 

 

– People life’s choices, culture and opportunities

– Practice (where he refers to Ericsson’s 10.000 hours rule of deliberate practice, click here if you want to read more about this)

– Luck (everyone needs to be in the right place at the right time)

– Cultural heritage (who do you think you are…where are your genes/experiences/values coming from?)

The conclusion is that great people are the result of an incredible talent mixed with a fortunate array of opportunities they have been given. The sports-specific consideration that Gladwell makes is related to observation of specific patterns in Canadian Hockey players. In particular, he focuses on the fact that most elite Canadian hockey players are born between January and April of any given year. Something to do with cut-offs for age-classes happening on January 1 of every year. Pretty much he discusses the fact that selection in Canadian hockey is more based on maturation. Something that he could have expanded a bit more I have to say.

Gladwell’s most interesting remark is that social forces largely explain why some people work harder when presented with exciting opportunities to succeed and improve. This is why Chinese people work very hard and American kids are raised with a fanatical devotion to meritocracy [something clearly missing in Italian kids….but this is probably material for another book!].

Most successful people have a phenomenal ability to focus their attention, they have an incredible ability to formulate strategies in order to resist impulses and they have incredible resilience. This is so true of champions. Champions are outliers, people with incredible skills, individuals able to see things faster and clearer than others, people able to move, jump, throw better than others. However as Muhammad Ali stated “Champions aren’t made in gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them: A desire, a dream, a vision. They have to have last-minute stamina, they have to be a little faster, they have to have the skill and the will. But the will must be stronger than the skill”.

Sport Outliers are special people, they are the ones winning gold medals at the Olympic games, the ones winning the six nations, the World championships. The talent needs to be there, but a part from culture, luck and social forces, what kind of opportunities can Sports Science provide? In many cases, the bests sports scientists tend to work with elite senior athletes and in many sports there is no cascade/adaptation of best practice to junior athletes and coaches and support staff working with development athletes. Can sports science make a difference at a very early stage of athletic development? Also, how many talents have been lost because of poor opportunities?

Without practice, training, and the right opportunities (i.e.access to best resources/facilities/advice/coaching and sports scientists?) success in sport can only be a chance of occurrence?

Recovery, training

>Recovery and regeneration: what is happening in elite sport?

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In the last few years I have observed a steep increase in interest versus recovery and regeneration strategies.

Athletes train and compete a lot these days and everyone feels the need to provide recovery and regeneration strategies to speed-up return to optimal functions.

I have to say that the quality and the science behind most of the recovery modalities is quite questionable and most of the times, the appropriateness of such modalities, could really be a matter of serious debates.

It is not the aim of this article to discuss recovery and regeneration, I promise I will write a more detailed article on this topic in the next few weeks.

In this article I would like to write about the fact that many elite training centres and Olympic associations are investing a lot of money into recovery and regeneration centres aimed at helping athletes.

In september 2006, the USOC opened a New Athlete recovery centre investing a lot of money in conventional and non-conventional recovery modalities/devices (http://usocpressbox.org/usoc/pressbox.nsf/6272c9a938d3a5cb8525711000564abd/aad006ac4a40193e852571ea0068b36d?OpenDocument).

The Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) recently spent 3.5 AUD millions to create the new Recovery Centre (http://www.ausport.gov.au/journals/ausport/Vol3no2/32new_ais.pdf) to provide this service to Australian Athletes.

The Japanese Olympic Association is also building a new site where recovery services will also be provided.

Many leading countries are investing in this area, however research in the most common recovery modalities is scarce or of poor quality. I expect an increase in the number of research studies in this area and I can already anticipate that many modalities currently used by famous athletes/teams will be shown not to be as effective as advertised!

Recovery, training

Recovery and regeneration: what is happening in elite sport?

In the last few years I have observed a steep increase in interest versus recovery and regeneration strategies.

Athletes train and compete a lot these days and everyone feels the need to provide recovery and regeneration strategies to speed-up return to optimal functions.

I have to say that the quality and the science behind most of the recovery modalities is quite questionable and most of the times, the appropriateness of such modalities, could really be a matter of serious debates.

It is not the aim of this article to discuss recovery and regeneration, I promise I will write a more detailed article on this topic in the next few weeks.

In this article I would like to write about the fact that many elite training centres and Olympic associations are investing a lot of money into recovery and regeneration centres aimed at helping athletes.

In september 2006, the USOC opened a New Athlete recovery centre investing a lot of money in conventional and non-conventional recovery modalities/devices (http://usocpressbox.org/usoc/pressbox.nsf/6272c9a938d3a5cb8525711000564abd/aad006ac4a40193e852571ea0068b36d?OpenDocument).

The Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) recently spent 3.5 AUD millions to create the new Recovery Centre (http://www.ausport.gov.au/journals/ausport/Vol3no2/32new_ais.pdf) to provide this service to Australian Athletes.

The Japanese Olympic Association is also building a new site where recovery services will also be provided.

Many leading countries are investing in this area, however research in the most common recovery modalities is scarce or of poor quality. I expect an increase in the number of research studies in this area and I can already anticipate that many modalities currently used by famous athletes/teams will be shown not to be as effective as advertised!