Friday 26 April 2013

On the road

It’s been an interesting month. Changing jobs and moving to new challenges. It has been also interesting because I had the chance to visit few places, give talks, meet people, learn loads and reflect on the last 8 years. I was in Vaxjo in Sweden at the end of March to talk about strength and power training. It was great to see some great coaches in the audience (one of my sporting idols and now successful silver medalist coach of the Swedish Handball team was there!) and a brilliant facility with plenty of athletes of all ages. This trip was followed by London for the Sports Analytics Summit to talk about data in Sport and how to use them better, great conference and lots of learning and new ideas. Then I lectured at the Strength and Conditioning Students Conference at Middlesex University and it was great to see so many young practitioners asking loads of questions and engaging to learn more. More recently I travelled to Potsdam University in Germany to give a talk about Science in Sport and discuss few potential collaborations with Professor Urs Granacher and his team. They do loads of interesting things on neuromuscular function, so watch this space for some exciting developments in the future. Spent a great afternoon at Birmingham University with my colleague Dr. Matt Bridge who is doing some very interesting work on Golf. and gave a talk on science and coaching on the road to London 2012. Finally, last Saturday I was at the Football Medicine Conference in London perfectly organised by Isokinetic to give a talk on vibration and its use in rehabilitation in a parallel workshop organised by UCL.

The next few weeks are going to be challenging as I am travelling again, but I am looking forward to catch up with loads of friends and colleagues and also learn about new things and continue to develop some ideas for research work to do in the next few years.

So, I will be at the VISTA conference in Bonn organised by the IPC to talk about technology in sport and how it can be used to help the coach and the athlete. Following that, I will be in Boston at the BSMPG Summer seminar to give two talks, but most of all to listen to some great speakers and visit some of the best sporting teams in the World and engage with some fantastic practitioners. Finally, at the end of May, I will be with Nike in Oregon at the #SPARQ2013 conference with some of my colleagues of the SPARQ Advisory Board.

If you are are a reader and are attending any of the above, make sure you get in touch and give some feedback. I am planning to rearrange the blog and improve it so feedback is needed to get it right. Also, I am starting to think about another edition of the strength and conditioning book so I need to start asking questions of what to improve in the next edition.

I promise to write a bit more in the next few weeks about few topics, time is now on my side (or at least this is what I believe!).

5 comments:

Unknown on 26 April 2013 at 23:18 said...

Welcome back Marco! Looking forward to regular posts again.

James Marshall on 30 April 2013 at 00:11 said...

Sounds busy Marco. For me the biggest problem I have is collecting and analysing data, whilst trying to coach. I don`t have an army of data analysts, nor a multi million pound kit budget.
Most researchers seem to have little concept of what happens in the field, day in day out with 20-30 people needing monitoring.
Your thoughts on this would be appreciated.

James Marshall on 30 April 2013 at 00:12 said...

Sounds busy Marco. For me the biggest problem I have is collecting and analysing data, whilst trying to coach. I don`t have an army of data analysts, nor a multi million pound kit budget.
Most researchers seem to have little concept of what happens in the field, day in day out with 20-30 people needing monitoring.
Your thoughts on this would be appreciated.

Unknown on 30 April 2013 at 01:22 said...

Very good point James,
I promise to write something about it because you are absolutely right!

Carl on 30 April 2013 at 13:57 said...

James,

The real issue is everyone is pretending (not everyone) they are collecting data and making amazing decisions with it that the manufacturers and vendors are not actually making or designing things that are helpful.

I disagree that researchers don't get it as many of them are former athletes, it's just that coaches give up too quickly on something or lack creativity to implement something.

CV

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