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Well, when we approach different athletes, it really, we kind of follow, our first step
is to observe them when we watch them. So, if we’re working with an athlete who happens
to be a swimmer then we’re going to look at all components of their activities, so
we’ll look at their start, their turn, their stroke, the number of strokes per lap, whether
they’re swimming a long course or a short course because that will influence how they’re
going to approach their turns and how their pull-outs are going to be affected by those
distances. So, in the pool what we’re looking for is timing between arm entry and kicking,
streamline, what causes their body to get out of that streamline position and what we
can do to help them turn over their stroke a little bit faster. Not unlike when we look
at runners, we’re also trying to look at how fast we can get their step to turn over
and we look at symmetry and we want to see are they equivalent on their – are they
doing the same thing on the right side that they’re doing on their left side? Because
if there is a difference between the right side and the left side then what we know is
happening there is a compensatory action for some other weak link in the chain. For instance,
if their arms cross their body more on their right side than they do on their left side,
then we have to look for a strength discrepancy or a flexibility discrepancy or a balance
discrepancy or maybe even a disruption in the anthropometry or anatomy of the body.
Sometimes they can have, particularly runners, may have a degradation in their foot, their
arch height, or their arch stiffness and so that may actually influence how their foot
strikes the ground and how it’s able to push off the ground.
Um, our first kind of activity with them started with Coach Marsh. He was the former swim coach
and he had been working with Dr. Pascoe from exercise physiology looking at lactate and
the demand that was placed upon the individuals from an exercise physiology perspective and
I was over there one day and we were talking about the mechanics and how people move and
he invited me to work with some of his sprint swimmers developing some martial arts training
with them and then we began to use the underwater camera system and we started to work during
the camps helping the young campers become better swimmers and he then took advantage
of that for his higher level functioning athletes and so, or higher performing athletes. Our
contribution to their success, uh, he indicated that by actually awarding me several NCAA
rings when they had won their NCAA and SEC championships, so that was very exciting.
I’m looking forward to the Olympics, just across the board. Because I love to watch
people move, this is a drive-in movie for me. I get to sit on the couch and watch this
from beginning to end and watch unbelievably talented people with unbelievable body control
move all day, every day and hopefully, at the peak of their capability and training.
So, hopefully everybody is peaking at the right time, and so you really get to see beautiful
movement. And I find movement to be tremendously beautiful. Some people find beauty in art;
I find art in movement.