How to motivate world champs
All Blacks strength and conditioning coach, Dr Nic Gill, explained to delegates at an AUT conference that motivation was not a major challenge for the recently crowned World Champions.
The AUT research supervisor was one of the speakers at the Sports Performance Research Institute New Zealand’s (SPRINZ), Strength and Conditioning Conference on the North Shore Campus 17 and 18 November.
Jerome Kaino's training regime produces results
He said he was lucky to work with a team like the All Blacks as they have their off-field stuff sorted. Finding ways to motivate them was not hard. “Jerome Kaino (All Blacks no6) came to me and said he wanted to be like Richie McCaw. We told him he would have to do what Richie does and that meant a lot of running,” he said.
“Jerome went away and worked hard on his running and he got the results. This year he was a key member of the cup winning team and narrowly missed out on being named the IRB’s international player of the year.”
Dr Gill was one of a number of highly respected experts, from New Zealand and abroad, presenting on issues relating to the training of athletes in high performance sport.
He was joined in the session on Delivering an Effective Programme by New Zealand Warriors strength and conditioning coach, Craig Walker, and sports psychologist at the NZRU, David Hadfield.
Dr Martin Buccheit, Directorate of Sport Science at ASPIRE Academy for Sports Excellence in Qatar led a keynote and ensuing discussion on developing a time- efficient strategy to high intensity training in team sports.
Does sleep affect sports performance?
Another highlight of the conference was Richard Swinburne who, under the supervision of Dr Gill, is embarking on a PhD looking at the role of sleep for high performance athletes. More specifically he aims to measure objectively how sleep affects recovery and the role of nutrition on sleep.
Dr Elizabeth Bradshaw, senior lecturer in Biomechanics at the Australian Catholic University talked on strategies to prevent lower limb injuries and John Lythe from High Performance Sport New Zealand explained ways of monitoring elite sport performance in New Zealand.
For more information on SPRINZ or the Strength and Conditioning conference