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The following are a few ideas i think might come in handy for any aspiring athletes, enjoy!
Don’t place training above competing.
It sounds stupid but a lot of athletes think competing doesn’t produce a training effect – it does! Many American Collegiate athletes do no speed training during the season because they compete so often – they effectively race themselves fit. If you are racing every weekend it is entirely possible to do one speed session a week and still improve loads.
If you’re a girl don’t be afraid to life weights.
Many girls don’t like lifting weights because they believe it will make them less feminine. This simply isn’t the case! Nearly 100% of professional female athletes lift weights and whilst some of them look like body builders the majority don’t! Lifting weights will not sacrifice your femininity – but it will make you better at your event.
Warming up
Nearly all athletes understand the importance of a good warm up before competing but few understand that it’s more than your muscles that need warming up. If your nervous system isn’t ready to run you won’t get very far. Many of the best sprinters do a fast run, usually about 50-75% of the race distance, about twenty five minutes before a race.
Practice tunnel vision.
So what if it’s windy or raining? So what if it’s cold? So what if you have a better athlete than you in the competition? The conditions are the same for everybody, everyone has to run the same distance or throw the same implements etc. Train yourself to forget the competition or the environment and focus only on your lane or attempts. Nothing else should exist.
Recovery is paramount.
The improvement doesn’t come during training but afterwards when your body repairs itself during your recovery. Training is in fact a stimulus for your body to set itself up to run faster, jump higher or throw further. Further more decent recovery allows you to perform at your best day after day. Improve your recovery by having massages, stretching, light exercise on your off days to increase blood flow, contrast showers, Epsom salt baths and plenty of sleep.
Stay positive.
In any season you will have good competitions and bad competitions. The mark of a true athlete is persisting when things go wrong. Keep your self belief at all times and trust yourself. Do not shy away from competitions since it can only take one good run to give you your confidence back and start a hot streak of good performances.
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So it's been a while since the last article so here is a quick summary of the stories making the headlines since i've been gone.
Dayron Robles of Cuba contrived to eliminate himself from the 60m hurdles competition at the world indoors, upon main rival Liu Xiang executing a near perfect start Robles thought it was a false start and slowed down, expecting a second gun to go.
But the second gun never sounded, Robles was eliminated and Xiang went on to claim the world title.
In the women’s 1500m Yelena Soboleva broke her own fledgling world record by recording a 3:57.71.
The Dwain Chambers saga has raged on, after winning the silver medal at the world indoors ‘athletics most dangerous man’ has been weighing up whether or not to appeal his Olympic ban, before joining Rugby League strugglers Castleford on trial.
Athletics fans needn’t worry though as Beijing is still Chamber’s main focus and he has agreed to cooperate with doping authorities and ‘name names’.
Look for Dwain’s not inconsiderable chest inside a GB vest in China this summer after the appropriate political manoeuvring.
The 100m medal from the Sydney Olympics that formerly belonged to Marion Jones has been awarded to Katrina Thanou – the woman famously hounded out of the Athens games for suspected doping.
The Olympic torch has begun its trek across the globe amid concentrated protests made in response to China’s poor human rights record and treatment of Tibet.
Kenenisa Bekele won a record 6th world cross country title in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Team mate Tirunesh Dibaba, 22, won her third world title after a superb final lap.
And that is just about that – roll on the outdoor season!
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As the final event of the evening was announced over the public address system and the men of the 60m world championship final settled into their blocks, an expectant hush fell over the crowd.
In lane 2 2003 100m world champion Kim Collins aimed to go one better than the Silver he claimed in 2003, the last time he ran indoors.
Next to him was Dwain Chambers, Britain’s most infamous and certainly most popular sports man of the moment hoping to let his running do the talking after so many vitriolic comments were directed his way in the build up to these championships, orchestrated by his own national body and the BBC.
One of those men to comment on Chambers was American Michael Rodgers experiencing his first major championship final in lane 5, after winning the US trials two weeks ago, the expectation of a nation was on his shoulders.
The last of the key players, Nigeria’s Olu Fasuba, took position in lane 6, the silver medallist from two years ago in Moscow and with the fastest time in the world this year of 6.51 already to his name, the slight favourite for the crown.
Only slight though, but slight is all it takes in an event where the difference between winning and losing is often thinner
A false start put the whole field on edge but as the gun sounded for a second time it was Collins who reacted the quickest, dragging Chambers out with him.
Fasuba also started well and maintained the challenge of the two competitors inside him by Michael Rodgers was left in the blocks by the world class field, a mistake which almost certainly cost him a medal.
At the halfway stage Chambers began to pull away from Collins as Fasuba began to open up the smallest of gaps between himself and the rest of the field.
That gap widened with ten metres to go as Collins fought back the ground he had lost to Chambers in the middle portion of the race.
Fasuba stopped the clock in 6.51 seconds to become the new world champion over 60m.
Chambers crossed the line just 3 hundredths behind holding Collins off by such a small margin that both would be rewarded with Silver medals.
Rodgers had to settle for fourth.
The women’s 60m was no less exciting with thrills and indeed spills along the way.
As she left the blocks, pre race favourite Ene Franca Idoko stumbled badly, effectively ruling her out of the race for the title.
Britain’s Jeanette Kwakye and Tahesia Harrigan of the British Virgin Islands looked to be locked in a private battle for the Gold as the two separated themselves from the crowd.
American Angela Williams though was in hot pursuit throughout and was slowly gaining the ground she had lost with a relatively poor start.
As Kwakye overcame Harrigan with just a few metres to go the Gold looked to be heading back to the UK but in the last few strides it was Williams who somehow found the gap required to win.
Williams finished in a world leading time of 7.06 with Kwakye and Harrigan both setting new national records with 7.08 and 7.09 respectively in 2nd and 3rd place.
The victory for Williams caps a remarkable reversal of fortunes for an athlete more used to being the bridesmaid than the bride.
The 2001 and 2004 editions of these championships both ended in a silver medal for Williams who has since undergone years of injury problems including fracturing her shin on two separate occasions.
Barring an absolute miracle or outrageous bad luck America was always likely to take Gold and Silver in the men’s shot putt.
The question was in what order with Christian Cantwell, the winner at the US trials having to play second fiddle to defending world champion Reese Hoffa in qualifying after Hoffa launched the shot 21.49m.
However in the final a different story was acted out.
Cantwell produced one of the most consistent series of all time to win with a spectacular distance of 21.77m to Hoffa’s 21.20m best effort.
Poland’s Tomasz Majewski claimed the bronze with a new national record of 20.93m.
The final set of medals awarded belonged to the women’s pentathlon which provided a much unexpected medal for Belgium.
Tia Hellebaut, a woman more renowned for her exploits in the high jump managed to hold off the vastly experienced UK athlete Kelly Sotherton in the 800m to win her first global title by a mere 15 points, or 2 tenths over the 800m.
And she did it the hard way, falling desperately over the line after Sotherton had set a new personal best over the distance of 2:09.95.
Her tally of 4867 points is a world leading mark and her 1.99m high jump was the highest ever achieved in women’s multi-events.
Sotherton was left to rue what might have been after setting the fastest 60 hurdles time (8.25) but then only managing to clear 1.81m in the high jump and 6.45m in the long jump culminating in a score of 4852.
Anna Bogdanova claimed the bronze with a tally of 4753.
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Otis Gowa is no stranger to coming through tough situations.
In 2005 he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a disease that he successfully beat though surgery, returning to training last March
[ Click here to read more ]
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Susanna Kallur (SWE) – The new world record holder could very well become the star of the championships if she can reproduce the form that has seen her leave all her competitors for dead in recent weeks. Competition for the gold medal (if any) may well come from American Lolo Jones (7.77) but the title appears to be Kallur’s to lose.
Dayron Robles (CUB) – The young Cuban may have the fastest time this year (7.33) and be a mere 3 hundredths away from Colin Jackson’s world record but he will have strong competition in the form of China’s Liu Xiang who is looking to lay down a marker ahead of the Olympics being held in his homeland
[ Click here to read more ]
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Florence Griffith Joyner was born in Los Angeles projects on the 21st December 1959 but it would be 28 years later in the Olympic heat of Seoul that the legend of ‘Flo-Jo’ was born.
Instantly recognisable with her flashy one-legged running outfits, long hair, and brightly painted fingernails, the American took gold in the 100m, 200m and 4x100m as well as silver in the 4x400m relay
[ Click here to read more ]
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Yelena Isinbayeva claimed yet another world record in the pole vault to cap a marvellous weekend of action across the globe.
The Russian soared to a mark of 4.95m to add 2cm to her own record in Donetsk, Ukraine in her first competition of the year
[ Click here to read more ]
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Jeremy Wariner, the man with Michael Johnson’s 400m world record firmly within his sights this year as left long time Coach Clyde Hart.
Hart, the man behind Wariner’s rise to the top had worked with the Texan for the past five years
[ Click here to read more ]
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Dwain Chambers has been named in the Great Britain squad for the world indoor championships being held in Valencia, Spain next month.
The announcement comes after Chambers dominated the British trials, beating established names such as Craig Pickering and Simeon Williamson en route to a 6.56 60m clocking that ranks him 5th in the world
[ Click here to read more ]
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In speeding her way to a 7.68s 60m hurdle victory at the BW-Bank meeting in Karlsruhe Susanna Kallur eclipsed one of the oldest world records the sport has known.
Set back in 1990 by the Soviet Union’s Ludmila Narozhilenko, 7.69s had stood since Kallur was just nine years old
[ Click here to read more ]
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Comments (1)
Comment by LukeS
on WADA: "We can't test for Human Growth Hormone."
Athletics News
However if you check back later on today hopefully i'll have a few more bits for you guys to read!
Cheers!
Luke.