AAGS 2021

28 areas? These are the areas that you might want to work on. Certainly, in Kenya the hunger for successes is massive and I’m absolutely certain in football that these three things are important as well. NBA fixtures seem to anticipate what we might see in football soon. Players train most of the time individually with their own staff (personal trainer, physio, mental coach), so how did you adapt to this and what did you do to ensure key information were usable for decision-making on players? Torres: Some of the superstars are surrounding themselves with their own staff. Probably because some of the teams, they don’t have the best staff possible. That could be one of the reasons although some of the teams have a really good staff. However, you would have to have a lot of physiotherapists, strength coaches and nutritionists to offer that player individualization. The players are surrounding themselves with a team and that’s OK if it works towards the players success and his care. A few years ago, there was a lot of disagreement such as “I’m the strength coach of the team, you should listen to me and do what I say.” However, reality is not that way, so you have to adapt. When I was in my last team in a leadership position, I thought we need to work with these people, because both sides care about the player. You have to be more open-minded; establish good communication channels, share information because if you share, they’re going to trust you more and want to be more open to share their information. Try to work against fear, egos, and work more in a collaborative way. I guess this is the present even if you’re saying is the future. I’m aware it’s happening in football, players working with their own staff. If I’m in the club side, I’m going to work with those people. In my opinion, this happens because the players have trusted people. They are with these people because they trust them. If you are in the club side, you have to respect that, but also talk with the player: “You can trust these people, but let’s make sure that they are one of the best in the world, not just because they are telling you what you want to hear.” Sometimes it’s tricky and sometimes it’s challenging but I think the smart approach from both sides is trying to work together and sharing information is the key point. Innovation and data management receive growing attention in the sports industry nowadays. Can you tell us more about your experience on how data changed your training programming? Was there any consequence from an injury risk perspective? Which possible solutions have you considered? Torres: I have just finished a study regarding injuries in the NBA. I don’t think injuries are only about training stimulus and managing the schedule. It’s very complicated to have the top players on your team, playing all the games and all the minutes. So, people like me analyze the schedule, create a strategy, which game they can rest or how we are going to manage the minutes at some point in the way that you can play. The more games the better but without putting the player in a dangerous situation. I don’t like the prediction of injuries or just having some data to predict injuries, but obviously we have information and we use that to look at trends and it’s more about managing players individually rather than only are we training too much or are we training with too much intensity. You conducted interesting research on performance of Kenyan runners. What are the main outcomes? And do you think they can be relevant to a football environment? Fudge: Like with most things in life, it’s not just one answer, the success of Kenyan runners is multifactorial. There’s lots of stuff going on there, but I tend to boil things down into three main headings and the first one being talent. I think you’ve got to have supreme talent and of course, Kenyan runners, have quite a lot of talent. The second one is environment. The environment that you grew up in, the environment that you’re coached in, the people around you, the things that you eat, your approach to life generally has a big impact on where that talent comes from. Linking it back to Mo Farah: he has an identical twin brother, which means that he has the exact same genetic template to be a world-class distance runner, but he grew up in a different part of the world and not the same type of environment and he is as far away from a distance runner as you could get so it’s a good example of the interaction of the environment. In Kenya, and it might be altitude, it could be running to school, it could be diet, it could be the culture and structure that they have there. And I’m sure in football you can all think of your own environments to nurture your talent. The last heading is mindset. Some might call it hunger to be successful, it’s to get up and go. It’s the part that allows you to make the most of that environment, make the most of that talent. I think the best athletes that I come across, have those three things going for them. If you use that framework to look at the environments that you’re working in in football and look at the balance, what is the balance you’re looking for? Is it talent, is it environment, is it mindset? Do you have any discrepancies in any of these