How a sports scientist aims to maximize performance on the track

Dr. Nerea Casal García is an athlete, private coach, and harm readaptation specialist who final yr accomplished a Ph.D. on observational evaluation in elite sports activities. In the present day, she is a professor on the Institut Nacional d’Educació Física de Catalunya of the College of Lleida, specializing in the speculation and observe of coaching and efficiency optimization.

Casal García is the corresponding creator on a brand new research in Frontiers in Sports activities and Energetic Residing, which revealed a significant shift over the previous 5 years within the stride patterns of feminine elite athletes throughout 400-meter hurdle competitions—a change that went along with a marked enchancment in efficiency.

She solutions our questions on her analysis and profession as a sportswoman, coach, and scientist.

What impressed you to grow to be a researcher?

In my case, curiosity performed essentially the most vital position. Throughout my years learning sports activities sciences, I always questioned how totally different coaching strategies would possibly work or methods to optimize the efficiency of the athletes I coached. Furthermore, I’ve all the time loved instructing, so the chance to mix analysis and schooling led me to pursue an educational profession after finishing my grasp’s diploma.

Having all the time practiced athletics, I turned more and more conscious, via my expertise as a coach, of the gaps in coaching info that might profit each coaches and athletes. This realization in the end impressed me to give attention to analysis on this area.

Are you able to inform us in regards to the analysis you are presently engaged on?

I’m presently persevering with my work in efficiency evaluation in athletics. Particularly, together with my analysis group, I conduct biomechanical analyses in high-level competitions.

On the similar time, I mix this with new tasks aimed toward learning the totally different athlete profiles and figuring out the important thing variables that decide efficiency in numerous occasions. We hope that these tasks can present useful insights into methods to tailor athlete coaching based mostly on their particular person traits.

In your opinion, why is your analysis necessary?

In sports activities, each athlete strives for max efficiency, dedicating numerous hours to reaching even the slightest enchancment. That is why coaches search methods to optimize efficiency throughout the out there time and situations. To reinforce efficiency as effectively as potential, it’s important to conduct research on totally different occasions to grasp which variables are key to efficiency and which strategies or strategies could also be best.

On the similar time, such analysis permits us to elucidate particular person variability in athletes’ performances. I imagine that the analysis we conduct is essential for supporting coaches by offering useful info and guaranteeing they’ve entry to essentially the most related knowledge to reinforce their athletes’ efficiency.

Are there any frequent misconceptions about this space of analysis? How would you tackle them?

I imagine that outcomes obtained from very particular samples, comparable to Olympic finalists, are typically overly generalized. Whereas having as a lot info as potential is important, it’s equally necessary to acknowledge that individualization is a basic precept in sports activities coaching. On the similar time, I imagine this can be a area that requires a excessive diploma of applicability.

Due to this fact, it’s important to supply scientific information that’s clearly relevant to the real-world context of efficiency and is definitely comprehensible for coaches.

What are among the areas of analysis you’d prefer to see tackled within the years forward?

I imagine that know-how is advancing quickly, and within the coming years, we can get hold of way more exact knowledge on inside load and biomechanical variables. This may permit us to take analysis to the following stage. I hope we may have a wealth of real-time info on athletes’ efficiency within the close to future.

How has open science benefited the attain and influence of your analysis?

Many sports activities coaches aren’t linked to the educational world, making it troublesome for them to entry this info, which is usually used solely by researchers. Nevertheless, open-access analysis permits all coaches to entry this data, bridging the hole between academia and sensible utility.