AAGS 2021

29 Fudge: When I started my career in physiology there was so much data of nobody knew what to do with it. I think now there’s some amazing platforms and technologies that bring that data together in a way that makes sense. You can work on weaknesses or strengths or whatever it is you want to work on with individual players. I’ve used big data, particularly around talent management, identifying talent and then managing resources. Bringing lots of information together and making it work that way, which I guess for football or something is probably quite usual, but in athletics, that’s quite a novel thing to do because it’s usually just down to how fast can you run around the track. Which data you consider most important for tracking players? Do you have any specific benchmark or KPI? Fudge: One of the nicest bits of technology that I’ve used is heart rate variability on runners. I think it gives a balanced approach to just looking at general recovery. There are issues with how you interpret it but with some expertise you can keep a good handle on how athletes are doing. There’s no replacement for the coaches and the coach tends to know who’s tired and who isn’t. I think across big sports heart rate variability allows you to have a quick snapshot of where people are at. Having a lot games means taking care of the players not only from a post- match recovery perspective. Paying attention to nutrition, sleep and the overall lifestyle became essential to the longevity of an athlete career in high performance. Which strategy did you adopt in your context? Torres: Exactly what you said, it’s a holistic approach. I’ve been giving a lot of talks about recovery, and I always explain the same. Recovery is focused on the strategies, hydrotherapy, contrast recovery boot and so on. The first thing is you must know the stressors that you are dealing with, and most likely they are not only physiological but also lifestyle and wellness. Once you know the context of that person, then you can start thinking about the strategies and the strategies for recovery don’t only apply after training and after competition but also on day minus one and in the day plus one. You do the bicycle; you go to the pool with the team but that’s just a very small part of the recovery process. The recovery process starts in the morning with a good breakfast with ginger shots and then you go to practice with supplements if you need them. You then have a good lunch, you take a nap and then you go to the physiotherapy, you do some meditation before going to sleep and you make sure that your room environment is good with no dust and no light. I can’t give an answer for which are the recovery strategies to recommend, because these are part of the person analysis, the stressors, the environment, habits and routines, more than just giving two or three sexy strategies such as hyper oxygen chamber or whatever else. I think sleep and rest are in the base of the pyramid, then nutrition and supplements and then everything else, massage, hydrotherapy, compression garments and so on. The basics are sleep, nutrition and having a plan for the whole day. And then of course strategies for post-game or practice but I think that if you really want to attack recovery, it’s going to be more complex than that. What is your strategy or approach that you have at the club or team level but also with the player individually? Torres: We are spending so much money in the clubs to have the best recovery resources, the pools, the different devices and so on. Depending on the sport and I think football, it’s closer to basketball compared to, for example, to American football, they come to the facility, they play, they get ready to practice and maybe they have lunch there or they leave. The approach I want to invite the audience to think about is if they spend 30% of the time in the facility with you, why are we spending hundred percent of the budget in the facility? Maybe we should have great resources in the facility but facilitate resources when they are not with us. The approach would be, again, which are the stressors that is causing you muscle damage inflammation or decreasing your immune system that we can address here, but what can you do at home that is going to support that holistic approach? I think a reflection and critical thinking about how we do things sometimes would give us some interesting answers to approach and attack recovery. Mental resilience and human limits, where are the boundaries? Fudge: The only boundaries are within people’s own mind with most things. I’ve seen people do some incredible things physically and mentally. I think a really great example from running is the sub four-minute mile. When everyone thought it wasn’t possible. And then one day somebody does it, and the next day somebody does it again. That’s one of the reasons why we love sports. That’s why we watch it is because you sometimes do break down the impossible, this happened in our marathon recently as well and was an amazing thing to witness. I think a lot of it’s the people you have around you, the belief that you have. The limits are normally just what you create yourself. Seonghwan Oh (South Korea National Team): Regarding polarized training periodization, it can be easily applied for Endurance sport, but what about football? Fudge: I’m not a football person, but I can see where you’re going with that. As I mentioned at the start, you do need to have that engine to work with, it is what allows you to do the high intensity activity and recover quickly across the year. I don’t see why people couldn’t do it. It is possible and similar to Lorena’s comments, it could be done at home, it doesn’t need to be done at the facility. It doesn’t need to be a high priority when people are on the on the pitch, so to speak it could