I recall almost 12 years ago, the T&T Olympic Committee (TTOC) launched a high-performance programme with then-partner Michael Johnson Performance (MJP), which has since closed in 2022.
The ensuing cacophony of criticism was telling. I will not waste space or time detailing those small-minded criticisms, but I will note that a few local experts did embrace the opportunity to complement what they already knew.
The TTOC High Performance Programme was never intended to replace local expertise. It was designed to complement and add value to the T&T elite high-performance ecosystem. Entities like the Sport Company of T&T (SporTT), in particular, had a good setup with good people. Tobias Ottley, head of Elite Development and Performance, was open-minded and collaborative. Anthony Marcano took on the challenge of leading the TTOC High Performance effort, and the expertise of Lance Walker, MJP executive vice president, Global Performance and Sports Medicine, remained available and accessible. Walker, now executive director of the Human Performance and Nutrition Research Institute at Oklahoma State University, is still willing to assist and support.
Alas! The unwillingness to embrace the need for greater use of technology and sports science was, at times, insurmountable. Walker called it the innovation paradox.
However, other countries that foster a high-performance culture made use of tools such as “Performance Matrix”: an algorithm that takes into account athletes’ results from recent years, adjusts for location and then determines which athletes are best suited in any given event.
They measure training volume, intensity, and density in sprinters' training and the way athletes may have to adjust volume, intensity, and density to elicit the best performance while keeping the risk of injury low.
Recently, I read an article with coach Laurent Meuwly, who talks about his use of sport technology, and the differences and similarities of training speed-based athletes and endurance-based athletes.
His use of technology that measures the force, direction, and speed from the moment of reaction to block exit, power, and contribution of the left versus the right foot. OptoJump to measure stride length, stride frequency, and ground contact times and to observe differences between the left and right sides. Testing to determine if conditioning levels are adequate enough for a return to maximal sprinting.
He also said, " We combine the Kistler blocks and the OptoJump to get acceleration profiles for the athletes to help determine the optimal block settings.
"We have a 1080 Sprint, which we use in both resisted and assisted sprints. This allows us to measure power for athletes at different resistances, and we can track progress as far as overspeed implementation goes. We also use laser measurements to provide instantaneous velocities during acceleration and maximum velocity development."
The use of a Whoop band. The data—such as sleep, heart rate variability, and resting heart rate—is automatically synced every morning to a database so the appropriate support staff can monitor the recovery status of the athletes. This data allowed athletes to spot a virus a couple of days before they become symptomatic and therefore, implement an intervention strategy, such as supplementing with vitamin C and zinc, etc., in an attempt to reduce the impact of the infection.
Walker and Oklahoma State University recently celebrated the groundbreaking of the Boone Pickens Human Performance Innovation Complex. The facility will integrate cutting-edge research to redefine the science of human performance and health innovation.
Closing the high-performance gap is difficult without embracing technology and sports science.
