Australia – The Last Week

I am writing this somewhere over the Pacific, not sure if it is night or day. I will be back in the USA today, Saturday June 9 after about 24 hours of flying. (There may be a few days before there are any more posts) It will be good to get home, but what a great trip. Just like the rest of the trip it was a very busy week. Saturday I did an all day seminar with Athletics (Track & Field Coaches) and Swim Coaches hosted by University of Queensland Sport. It was mixture of practical demonstrations and lecture. It turned into one of my typical information dumps, where I tried to present too much in the eight hors allocated. There was a real good cross section of coaches from the youth to the elite level. That always presents a challenge but it is fun to always make the connection of where the elite have come from. Monday was the start of the Evolution of the Athlete Conference at the University of Queensland. I was honored to give the keynote address on the Long Term Athlete Development Process and another address on Building the Athlete from the Ground Up. Later that day I also did a practical session. The conference spanned three days. I really enjoyed the second day morning session on skill acquisition (you will hear more on this in later posts) It was a challenging session, but very thought provoking. I was unable to attend the final afternoon session on Wednesday because I had to fly to Canberra for a meeting of the Australian Rugby Union (ARU) National Talent Squad (NTS) strength and conditioning coaches headed up by Kelvin Giles. It was a great group of coaches, really knowledgeable and focused. They work with players aged 14 to 17 who are then passed onto an Academy and eventually to Super 14 squads and if good enough to the Wallabies. We had two initiatives to work on: 1) strengthening in the scrum and 2) refining the Athletic Competencies. It was fun working with them, not sure how much I contributed, but I sure learned a lot.The meeting was at the Australian Institute of Sport (more on AIS in another post)