Improving Player Speed and Drug Testing Advances

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Improving Player Speed and Drug Testing Advances

Coaching Well interview with Alex Gardiner

National Sport Center General Manager, President of Athletics Canada from 1994 - 97, and University of Manitoba Head Track and Sprint coach from 1984 - 1993

C.W.: What can a coach do to improve a player’s speed?

A.G.: These are my thoughts for improving speed for young basketball players and those still developing. Mature players have a sense of what they can and can not do. So let me begin by talking about the definition of speed. The practical application of speed in basketball is really the acceleration portion of speed. As examples moving from a stop to a place to either recover on defense or move with the ball or move to the ball or move to a clearing. So for basketball most of speed has to do with accelerating. The second element is changing pace. For example moving from an effort of seventy five to eighty percent while moving down the court to a hundred percent for a few steps. That being said how do you improve acceleration? One of the keys is being very cognizant of, and having a mental connection to, the first step. After having made that first step correctly, just build the next steps on it. In observing young and developing basketball players, some of them try to take a stride that is too long as opposed to one that is short and powerful to enhance acceleration. The strides to enhance acceleration should initially be a little short and a little more powerful. Players never or seldom get to maximum speed in basketball. It would have to be a pretty impressive ball handler to run at maximum and deal with the ball. On defense or while filling the lanes maximum speed could be reached but the length of the court would suggest it would only be reached for one or two strides. Other than being very conscious of that first step, building on further steps, and making sure there is a rhythm to the acceleration as opposed to taking overstriding steps, core strength work should be done. What I mean by core strength work is, not only does the lower body, starting at the waist, have to be strong, the muscles of the abdomen and the back have to be strong. They really support the movement of the lower body and integrate the movement of the lower body with the upper body. Sometimes up to ten percent of speed can be derived from the strength in the upper body so upper body strength can not be neglected either. A core strength program should involve somebody who knows how to put together a strength program that focuses on what is done in basketball. Basketball’s explosive movements must be identified, whether it is the jump or the first two steps, and then be imitated in the strength program. It is difficult to do in writing or even with stick drawings so what is really needed is a strength and training expert who really knows what the basketball explosive movements are like.

C.W.: There is growing concern about the use of substances to improve athletic performance. Can you explain what was done in Canada between Canada’s Olympic 100 meter Gold experience with Ben Johnson and Canada’s Olympic 100 meter Gold Experience with Donovan Bailey?

A.G.: After the Dubin inquiry in 1988 the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF), who is the international governing agency for track and field, instituted on the heels of Athletics Canada, which is our national track and field association, different testing protocols. The changes did trickle down to a few other countries as well. Under the umbrella of out of competition tests there were what they would called no notice random tests. In other words the athletes in the dope testing pool, and those were usually ones that had a certain international standing or a certain national ranking, would be asked to provide urine samples at a training site, at home, literally with no notice. They would receive a telephone call and be asked to report at an appointed time to provide a sample. "No notice" didn’t mean in the middle of the night. It meant they had a given number of hours to appear at the lab or a testing site. The other out of competition tests would be target testing. Should an athlete be suspected of doping, a call would be made by someone saying they were concerned about the particular athlete. A panel would be very quickly formed with a sports science expert, a sport doping expert, and probably one of the members of the board of directors. They would make a decision whether to target test this individual. In other words they would go in and request a urine sample. They would not say the athlete had been targeted by a fellow athlete or a coach. It would appear to the athlete to be exactly the same as an out of competition no notice test. The other testing protocol is "in competition" testing at major national championships, major competitions, and of course all international championships. Most people in the doping world argue that in competition testing is too far after the fact and that any athletes that have been cheating will have cleared their system of any of evidence of doping. They have introduced a mass spectrometer, the basic testing apparatus, which is able to detect levels of drug metabolites in the urine, depending upon what the classification of the drug is, anywhere up to six months. Unfortunately there are still certain classifications of drugs that can not be detected. We still do not know if an athlete has been using human growth hormone. We do not know whether athletes have been blood doping, in other words repacking their blood after emptying their system of a pint or two of blood and then replacing it later with the same blood. Some things can not be detected still and we suspect that is still going on. However there is more education now, although certainly never enough. But now athletes know that there are not just dangers of being caught, there are personal health hazards in anything that they would be doing. So the Canadian system I would say is probably the most vigilant, objective system in the world for testing. It is certainly outstrips most of the European countries and most of the Asian countries, and is probably the leader along with Great Britain and Australia.

C.W.: Would you describe the role of the National Sports Center of which you are now General Manager

A.G.: The National Sports Center is one of a chain of sport centers that exist across the country. The first center was established in Calgary as a legacy of the 1988 Olympics. The second in Victoria as a legacy of the 1994 Commonwealth Games. Montreal and Manitoba came online as of April 1st, 1997. Toronto and Vancouver will soon be added. We are generally supported by Sport Canada, which is a department of Heritage Canada, the Canadian Olympic Association, the Coaching Association of Canada and a local host partner or partners. Our mandate is pretty simple. Generically we are here to provide enhanced programs and services for high performing athletes. Our definition of high performing athletes are those that are top sixteen in the world or those progressing to top sixteen in the world. For examples, Manitoban basketball players such as Todd MacCulloch of the University of Washington or Terri-lee Johannesson of the women’s national team would be athletes of this caliber. We provide them with a full menu of sport medicine and sport science services. Anything from orthopedic assessment, surgery if they need it, sport massage, athletic therapy, physiotherapy, chiropractic care, vision care, dental care. On the other side of the equation we provide them with personal counseling, career start support, mental training, nutritional programs, anything we need to do to put the athletes in a position where they can perform with the best in the world. It is a holistic all encompassing service. It is directed to athletes and to coaches. One of the main components of the National Sport Center in Manitoba is the National Coaching Institute. This is the advanced education wing for high performance coaches and we will be providing a full curriculum for them over the next two years. So we are here to serve athletes and coaches directly. Our administration is small. Hopefully our bureaucracy is non-existent and with our other partners across the country we hope to make Canada’s performances at the national and international levels even stronger through the years through the year 2000.

C.W.: Is any trickle down effect to our other athletes anticipated?

A.G.: Yes part of our mandate is to, where we can taking advantage of economies of scale, include developing athletes in any of the programs that we can. For example, nutritional seminars, strength training seminars. Where we can serve more than one athlete at a time we certainly have targeted that next group of Manitoba athletes who have got their toe just on the line ready to break onto the national team or to have a strong national or international performance in some event. Yes it is trickle down already and we have captured those promising Manitobans who are just a year or two away from making their first national team or competing internationally. So it is part of our circle.

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