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?