Toni Minichiello signposts how Jess Ennis got to gold

At the International Festival of Athletics Coaches in Glasgow this past weekend, top coaches shared secrets of Olympic success.

Frank Dick had organised a series of presentations & lectures that actually had that much prized conference asset: sonething for everyone.

Coaching tips at the Emirates Arena

Headlining the Conference were the coaches to the heavily favoured gold medal track prospects from GB & Australia, Jessica Ennis and Sally Pearson. 

In Glasgow the chosen few in the audience of 250 hung on every word from Toni Minichiello & Sharon Hannon who trains athletes along with her husband Peter on the Gold Coast.

Sports scientists and physios mingled with coaches hoping to glean tips on strength coaching, plyometrics and periodisation. However it was the personal relationships between athlete & coach plus how those twin imposters of success and failure were dealt with that were most intriguing.

Plyometric session with Peter Hannan

The athletes were both both very much in the loop and took an active part in designing their schedules which were detailed in the years leading to Olympic success in London this summer in heptathlon & hurdles.

However it was striking how these coaches made simplicity a key to coaching and training, a lesson for all of us involved in sport.

Cricket limitations on fast bowling: does it really reduce or just delay injury?

Cricketers have limits set from early in their careers to reduce the risk of injury. But could these be detrimental instead of being preventative?

A Sydney based Physio who works with the Sydney Sixers team as well as having his own city based clinic suggests that injuries may be around the corner in any case, possibly due to a lack of tolerance to fast bowling as they develop.

Sydney Cricket Ground where New South Wales play

Currently fast bowlers are restricted like elite bowlers in a prophylactic measure designed to manage the volumes of what is an unusual physical effort. It is recommended as a means of managing low back pain and stress fractures or pars defects.

But Patrick Farhart, head physio to New South Wales from 1990 to 2009 considers that these restrictive measures may merely be delaying the onset of injuries rather than preventing them. Farhart believes young bowlers cannot build a tolerance to the stresses of fast bowling with limits in place.

Read the full Bowling Limits: The Age article

This should get us thinking about adaptations made early in a young sporting career, and also begs questions as to whether restrictions on practice actually prevent potentially useful and beneficial adaptations taking place?

Manipulations are as effective as other therapies in treating low back pain

Back pain? Why not call us at SPACE?

Our treatments are consistent with a leading review of studies into back pain treatments!

The results of a Cochrane review into Chronic Low Back Pain (CLBP) suggests that spinal manipulative therapy (SMT) is as effective at treating chronic long term back pain as exercises or standard physio.

Whilst we at SPACE would be disappointed at being labelled as such, at least our approach of making small manipulative adjustments with a strong emphasis on exercise has been shown to be a successful option by physios for anyone with back ache.

Stuart Barton, Director & Physio of SPACE
performing a manipulative adjustment

Spinal manipulative therapy (SMT) is an intervention that is widely practiced by a variety of health care professionals worldwide. The effectiveness of this form of therapy for the management of chronic low-back pain has come under dispute. 

This latest Cochrane update took in over 6000 participants in the review, and demonstrated that SMT appears to be as effective as other common therapies prescribed for CLBP even though it was less clear how it compared to inert interventions or sham (placebo) treatment, largely due to the lack of studies. 

Also good news for the patient is that no serious complications were observed with SMT. 

See for yourself at Cochrane Summary on SMT for CLBP 

Or drop in at SPACE if you have low back pain, and have one of our experts soothe any fears over treatment, as we can blend SMT with exercise, or other forms of physiotherapy such as kinesio tape, myofascial release, dry needling or joint mobilisation in a number of ways. 

Stuart, Emma-Jane, Stephen, Ross, Kenny and Jon are all well versed in treating this kind of pain: why should you suffer when these physio experts are on hand in Edinburgh city centre?

10 Noises We Hate The Most - And Why

Ten noises: from screeching to screaming-we hate' em!
It's all down to the brain, and our primative adaptive mechanisms! Of course!

The sounds we find least attractive and cause negative emotions include the cartoonesque fingernails on a blackboard, a fork scraping a glass, or a scream.

The Journal of neuroscience has an article in its latest issue from Newcastle University & the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College, London. Researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scrutinise brains of participants as they heard various sounds. Sensations of displeasure or disgust at a sound affects activity between the auditory and emotional aspects of the brain.

The auditory cortex and the amygdala interact intensely, and unpleasant sounds caused the amydala to become more active provoking a negative reaction that could form emotional memory. It appears the amygdala encodes the auditory stimulus with a certain value, and that in 'a complex and rapidly-changing environment this allows for sensory information to be extracted and processed efficiently'. The amygdala also assesses the mismatch in sounds between perceived and received reward as a result of the auditory information which may be one of the adaptive processes involved.

Rotating 3D image of the Amygdala

If you want to hear the sounds for yourself, Medical News Today has a sample of some of the sounds here: MNT article 251489.

Sounds such as a knife on a bottle appear to have a heightened response in the almond-shaped amygdala compared to applause, a baby laughing or water flowing. The negative-response sounds occur within a similar frequency of between 2,000-5,000 Hz. 

The full top ten reads like this:

1. Knife on a bottle
2. Fork on a glass
3. Chalk on a blackboard
4. Ruler on a bottle
5. Nails on a blackboard
6. Female scream
7. Anglegrinder
8. Brakes on a bike squealing
9. Baby crying
10. Electric drill

The full text article is available here to read in the October 10 issue Journal of Neuroscience: 32(41) 14184-14192 'Features versus Feelings'.

Beyond just recognising which sounds have higher perceptions of displeasure and the effects on the brain, Professor Tim Griffiths who led the study, also suggests that this may lead to a greater understanding of emotional disorders and conditions such as tinnitis or migraine.

Kenyan Athletics Drug Question Could Run and Run

Since the positive drug test and subsequent banning of Kenyan distance runner Mathew Kisorio in June, Kenyan officials have suggested that this was an isolated incident, and not part of any 'systemic doping procedure' or common practice carried out in the Rift Valley ("Suspended Kenyan says doping is common").

However, in this last week of September, Athletics Kenya has seen fit to officially comment after investigating claims made by an undercover German journalist posing as a sports' agent that doping is widespread in the training centres of Kapsabet and Iten. 

Athletics Kenya Chairman Isaiah Kiplagat has now stated that the body is working with police and the World Anti-Doping Agancy (WADA) to investigate this 'criminal act' (Athletics Kenya admits banned substance use: Runners World).

Hajo Seppalt at London2012

StarAfrica.com carries the story of the report Hajo Seppalt made on German television last week, where he cites doctors carrying out injections to elite Kenyan AND foreign athletes whom are training in the famed Rift Valley, and suggests that the blood doping has been occuring for years, naming top Kenyan marathon and Olympic runners on the programme 'Sportschau'. See starafrica.com banned substances described by journalist.

Web forums are alive with information and clips of interviews by Seppalt on radio and television, (German) tv interview, with even Nairobi chemists being quoted as to their athletic customer base!

It is unlikely we have heard the last of these claims, and more importantly not the last of the investigations by WADA, which should be made public by the International Association of Athletics  Federation (IAAF). This is key, as the Danish anti-doping Chairman Bengt Saltin had suggested to Seppalt that there were 'changes in blood levels' of some Kenyan athletes noted at IAAF European events between 2008-2010. Kisorio, it should be noted, was found to have tested positive for anabolic steroids at the 2012 Kenyan Athletics Championships.

Kiplagat himself has stated that Athletics Kenya has stipulated that doping equipment will become mandatory at national meets from 2013 to help curb banned performance enhancers, and restore credibility to the Kenyan endurance programme internationally.

Will that be sufficient, or is it too little, too late to end what Kisorio described as being drug use promoted by medical personnel in exchange for a share of any winnings?