24 Feb 2016
Doha, 24 February 2016. Day two of Aspire Academy’s second sports science conference on the topic of “Monitoring Athlete Training Loads – the Hows and Whys” has drawn to a close. The event has featured a range of informative and valuable discussions on the most suitable methodologies and theories for effectively managing and monitoring training loads to protect athletes from injuries resulting from intensive training regimes.
In his opening remarks, Mr. Ivan Bravo, Director General of Aspire Academy said: “We are grateful to the organising committee of this conference for making it such a success and attracting such a large number of sports science experts to Aspire Academy. We are focused on achieving our aim of becoming the international standard of excellence and benchmark for the development of youth athletes by 2020. In a country like Qatar, where are able to assess a relatively limited number of between 4,000 and 5,000 boys for sporting talent every year, the work of our sports science team is absolutely critical in enabling us to improve our selection process, to support our coaches and to produce athletes capable of delivering strong results.”
Professor Tim Cable, Director of Sports Science at Aspire Academy, said: “Monitoring the training load of athletes – is a topic of considerable interest to a range of audiences, making it the obvious choice for the basis of this year’s conference. We are pleased to say that the world’s leading experts in this field have joined us here for this conference. Their involvement helps to facilitate the widespread sharing of knowledge, expertise and different perspectives through the conference’s various modules.”
One of the star attractions at the conference was Dr. Carl Foster, Professor of Exercise and Sport Science from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse in the United States of America. Foster, who delivered a keynote speech, commended the conference organisers for providing a great opportunity for participants to explore different perspectives towards monitoring athlete training loads, and to focus on areas of research that have not been previously been examined in depth. He added that the conference will help facilitate discussion around how best to prepare athletes for competing to their fullest potential.
Foster highlighted the importance of numerous sessions in the conference programme that offered participants the chance to explore the latest in scientific thinking and research on the topic, but which also provided the opportunity to debate what more is needed from the sports science community to improve monitoring processes and methodologies.
Foster concluded by commenting on how bringing together such a renowned group of sport scientists from around the world in one place is a significant development. Between them, they have considerable expertise and deep knowledge but seldom have opportunities to talk to each other and challenge each other’s perspectives in a manner that contributes positively towards athletes’ development. He indicated that capturing the proceedings from the event in an academic publication would be of huge benefit since this will provide a reference point for the topic both now and in the future.
Aspire Academy’s second sports science conference brought together a world-renowned group of sports science experts to discuss the past, present and future of athletic monitoring techniques, review case studies of applied research in elite sports teams, player tracking technology as well as assessing monitoring tools for a variety of sports.