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ALWAYS LEARNING European Horizontal Jumps and Sprints Symposium Karlstaad Sweden RELEVANT YOUTUBE PLAYLISTS BELOW:
Falun: Karlstaad It's important for all of us to continually learn and evaluate as coaches and athletes. Last year I was very privileged to journey to Sweden for the bi-annual jumps and sprints get together organised by Swedish Athletics and European Athletics. In 2017 I'd also been to the event in Falun. Although the majority of coaches were Scandinavian there were coaches from all over Europe – I met some from Portugal, France and The Netherlands. To say that the symposium was packed full of theory and practicals is a bit of an understatement, rather it would be truer to say that it was over-flowing with sessions. There was, for example, a practical on the Sunday morning before we left for home at midday which kicked off at 7.45am! The team of speakers included, regular on the coaching lecture circuit, Dan Pfaff, Sweden's Yannick Tregaro (former coach to Christian Olsson and currently Tobias Montler) and Serbia's Goran Obradovic coach to Ivana Spanovic. Highlights I always like practical sessions as you can really see what the coaches are trying to get across and how they coach an event - however, I will say that some of the theory lectures in Karlstaad were equally gripping. As a coach, it's important that you digest and think about what’s being said by the expert coaches and don't just follow exactly what they do - that's to say incorporate their ideas into your training without knowing why you should. It would be really easy to mimic certain drills, for example, or give Ivana Spanovic's weights programmes to your athletes (Obradovic was very open with what he shared). Obviously training programmes are designed for specific athletes and cater for what a particular athlete needs. A session that I really appreciated was taken by Tregaro – he’s one of Sweden's most profile coaches in terms of turning out great athletes. A look at the PBs of the athletes he has coached tells you much (HJ 2.30m/2.08m, TJ 17.83m, LJ 8.22m/6.41m etc). The Swede's session was all about specific warm-ups and the take-off for the long jump. He showed some new to me drills and I was engrossed in thinking how I could apply these to those I coach back in the UK. I was particularly reflective on his thoughts on the arm action at take-off. He advocated a lifting of the shoulders and arms after the arms had passed into the more normal take-off position (with the front hand's arm roughly parallel to the eye and the rear upper arm around parallel to the ground). He showed via athlete demonstrators a number of drills where the arms continue to lift (to almost a shrug of the shoulders). Doing this is seen to create more vertical force and lift on take-off. This is something that I have seen numerous continental jumpers do and I could now see why it could work. Some other unique to me drills pertained to the penultimate step set-up, where there was a very dynamic emphasis on the step placement before the transition into the jump. Look out for more on Pfaff and Obradvoic's presentations in another post and you can checkout some of the sessions from Karlstaad and Falun on the channel. Check out the relevant playlists LINKS above. Below me in Falun with Sweden's all-time jumper Michel Torneus (8.44PB) sort of!
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