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From: Turlo
Date: 5/6/2003
Time: 1:11:43 PM
Remote Name: 158.125.1.23
Totally agreed Mr Meakin.
With respect to the sports science side of things, its very important to understand that sport science is not an exact science. Waht works for one may not work for another, as Wayne said its all about trying difference things and seeing what works best for the individual.
Hers a practicle example of how sports science may have had a negitive effect on MD running. About 5 years ago a conference was held in britain where one of the top morrocan coachs was going tell us all the training secrets that have produced so many world class morrocan distances runners. In attendance were all the this countries so called top coaches and sports scientists. Basicaly the morrocan guy told out lot that the morrocans had been doing very similar training to what seb coe used to do (5 training paces etc). At the end of the confernece one of the british sports scientists said to another "why did he bother coming all this way to tell us about something we all ready knew 20 years ago, things have moved one from then"
It could not believe what the he said, basically he threw all this useful info back into the morrocans face by saying that it was out dated. So why is it that these "outdated" techniuqes produced the best MD runner ever and many other great morrocans, when out more upto date techniques are producing runners that can't even compete on the international scene. Crazy or what!
That was just one example of how sport science has had a negitive effect on distance running, but there are also many ways in which sports science has had a possitive effect on performance.
In my veiew sports science still has a big role to play in terms of improving competition preparation. I think nutrition, psychology and performance testing are areas that all us runners need to learn about as they are will bring great performance benefits and will also nice complement all the hard training that are are/need to be putting in.
Any thoughts?
Cheers
Turlo