Despite ‘Worlds’ success...
Trinidad and Tobago 2013 IAAF World Championship 400m hurdler Jehue Gordon shared his experiences at the Michael Johnson Performance Centre at a workshop organised by the bpTT and the MJP at Hasely Crawford Stadium yesterday.
And Trinidad and Tobago Olympic Committee (T&TOC) president Brian Lewis said the continuing partnership between the MJP, bpTT and the T&TOC was “critical” to this country’s goal of developing elite and high class athletes to perform at future regional and international games.
MJP director Lance Walker and Gordon’s coach Dr Ian Hypolite were also present at the workshop, hosted in the VIP Lounge.
Gordon, who spent a week’s stint at the Texas-based MJP back in January, explained that the MJP’s officials scientific approach to athletic development identified physical and nutritional weaknesses that Gordon and Hypolite had to work on.
“For the short period of time that I was up at MJP, I was able to learn a lot about my body, a lot about my weaknesses.....also in terms of nutrition I was able to realise that most of the stuff that I thought was healthy actually was not nutritional enough...and they were able to map out a good programme for me that guided me through my season from April until the Worlds,” he said.
Gordon specified that he needed higher knee and back lift and to alter his arm swing. The top T&T hurdler also said he discovered that his drive from the blocks was deficient, which he said was owing to an ankle injury that he is still managing and working on.
“Also when it came to core strength I was much weaker on my left side compared to my right side, so we had to do a lot of stability and activation stuff for the left side. It was just significantly weaker, so it is a continuous programme and not something that is going to fix one time, but something we know we need to work towards,” he said.
MJP officials and his coach mapped out a programme identifying corrective measures that coach Hypolite took to ensure his success at Worlds.
But there is still work to do.
“I am still weak, my body is still flimsy, I am still young, so I am not trying to overload my body too much and do stuff my body is not ready for. It’s a gradual progress continual process to reach where we want to reach,” he said, adding that doing the right thing does not necessarily guarantee good results right away.
“For me, I try to pass on knowledge to the younger ones. You might see discrepancies in them and weaknesses in them and I just want to relate the same message to them because I know from personal experience what I went through. So it is more about helping the young ones that need the help and sharing the info and not being greedy about guarding the info,” he said.
For Lewis, the partnership between T&TOC, MJP and bpTT was about identifying a path to future success for T&T athletes.
“Elite and high performance sport is not the same as recreational sport. At this level it is a results business and you can’t get away from that. So we at the TTOC have to build the next phase, which is targeted results and objectives. Remember, one of our goals is ten Olympic medals by 2024; the journey has started and continues now,” Lewis said.
Lewis added that workshop like these add to the sporting capacity and the T&TOC’s continued partnerships would focus on developing the coaching, sporting education and administration capacity and knowledge database.