A Report on the 2010 Mitchum Sponsored UK Athletics Running Masterclass with Olympians Tom Parsons, William Sharman and Team GB Nutritionist Glenn Kearney.
I know this post is a few days late but I have just started a new job in Windsor and to say that this past week has been a bit hectic would be putting it lightly! Without any further delay, here is my report on the UKA running Masterclass that I attended last Sunday….
Sunday’s UKA Masterclass was both challenging and mind expanding to say the least. The sheer amount of muscle that protested vehemently when I hobbled out of bed Monday morning are testament to a testing, fun filled and informative day with two of the UK’s top Olympians; William Sharman the hurdler and Tom Parsons the High Jumper, along with Team GB’s top Nutritionist Glenn Kearney.
The day was split up into three main sessions, first there was a Q+A session with Tom and Will which offered a very unique insight into the life of a professional Athlete, then there was an all too brief chat with Glenn about everything nutrition and how nutrition can play in important part in both the training of top UK athletes and the more regular Joes like ourselves! The final session was a skills and drills session taken by the two Olympians on Loughborough University’s fantastic indoor 100m track.
The Crew! In the middle - Tom Parsons, Glenn Kearney and William Shraman. I am the bloke wearing the Black T-shirt, two people to the left of Tom.
So much was covered on the day that it would take me pages and pages to write everything down, instead I thought that I would cover some of the main points from that day in that favourite form of punctuation – the bullet point.
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Highlights from William Sharman and Tom Parsons Q+A
- When asked how they cope with high stress moments before either a big race or important jump, both athletes believe that mental as well as physical preparation is key. Tom’s coach is a big fan of using visualisations in his training and makes Tom focus on acting like a tiger as he is about to make his jumps so that he has something to occupy his mind at the critical moment. Will believes that when it comes to his hurdling, his performance in a given race is split 50/50 between his physical performance and mental attitude. He believes that his body is capable of running at its best for every race but it depends on his mental attitude as to how fast he can actually run. He works with sports psychologists to build up his mental toughness and says that his coach plays an important role in how mentally prepared he is for a race.
- When asked which athlete Tom and Will look up to and respect the most each immediately named Phillips Idowu the triple jumper their top choice. Both feel that Phillips has really matured in terms of dedication and professionalism and as a result is making leaps and bounds in his triple jump career. Will also mentioned Dai Greene the hurdler as being a highly respected athlete as he has dealt with the immense pressure of being at the top of his game and all the hype that surrounds his expected continual high performance.
- When asked what the low points of their careers were and how they dealt with them, Tom named his recent poor performance at the European Championships where he only jumped 2.23 compared to his season best of 2.28. Will viewed his recent wrist break during training in January as a low point for his career as he felt this was a massive setback after his breakthrough performance at Berlin last year (where he came fourth). Tom overcame his setback at this year’s European Championships by taking a long hard look at his training to see how he could make changes whereas Will says that he had to be extremely creative with his training whilst he is recovering from his shattered wrist injury to make sure that is impacts his fitness as little as possible.
- Both athletes perform plyometric running drills before training as both a warm up and to improve their running technique to make it the most efficient. They said that running drills would be great for long distance runners as the exercises are another way of defending against injury. (more on plyometric running drills to follow)
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Top Tips from Team GB Nutritionist Glenn Kearney’s Q+A
- The first thing that Glen stressed was that it is vitally important to get the basics right when it comes to running nutrition. Without regular, wholesome meals with the correct balance protein, carbohydrates and the right kind of fats, you body won’t be able to extract everything that it needs for optimum recovery. Without getting the basics right, there is no amount of pills or potions that will improve performance.
- Testing on all top UK athletes last year (spearheaded by Glenn), showed that most were iron deficient. Iron is found in red blood cells and is important in the efficient transport of oxygen from the lungs to the muscles. Glenn recommends that all runners eat one red meat meal a week along with regular consumption of high iron foods such as spinach.
- If you have tendon problems then you shouldn’t be taking glutamine products as this has been linked to long term tendon problems. Instead you should make sure that you contain pineapple in your diet as this has been proven to be high in a protein-digesting enzyme called Bromelain which reduces muscle soreness and inflammation in joints and tendons.
- The nutrition industry has done a complete U-Turn on coconut milk and oil. Originally thought to be of no use to athletes due to its high saturated fat content, recent research suggests that although coconut milk and oil is high in saturated fat, it also contains high amounts of Laic acid which has very powerful anti viral, anti fungal and anti cholesterol properties.
- When asked for an example of what a nutritious breakfast would be, Glenn gave two options – one cold and one hot. The cold choice was muesli with honey, natural low fat yoghurt and dried fruit whereas the hot choice was an omelette made out of one egg yolk and two egg whites along with spinach.
- Glen stresses that you should be trying to eat the correct foods 90% of the time and is a great believer in allowing his athletes to let their hair down 10% of the time so that they can eat out with friends or have a few beers. He says that otherwise being a professional athlete would be a nightmare!
- Cereal bars are ‘bad’ food choices as most of the time they have lots of hidden preservatives and have no real nutritional benefit. Instead he suggests that his athletes eat more protein and carbohydrate bars before and after training. Tom Parsons is a particular fan of such bars in aiding recovery after hard training sessions.
- Eating white meat just before you go to bed helps increase muscle growth and recovery (almost like a growth spurt), especially if you have had a hard training session that day.
- Vitamin D is the vitamin that the skin synthesises from sunlight and is important in all kinds of ways from bone density to mental fitness. Glen suggests getting regular doses of sun whenever possible and a good quality Vitamin D supplement for those of us that can’t jet off somewhere hot and sunny every weekend!
- Both Tom and Will focus on not including any junk calories in their diet. Things like white bread have no real nutritional value and therefore they try to minimise their intake in favour of wholesome foods.
- Glen said that the most important supplement that Athletes can take is Omega three and everyone that doesn’t get enough fish into their diets should take such a supplement.
- Glenn is a great believer in “Genetic Nutrition.” This involved individual athletes customising their eating plans around their genetic heritage. If you are West African in origin (like William Sharman) then you should be eating a variety of wholesome and healthy West African Foods. If you are Gallic in origin then you need to incorporate lots of fish into your diet etc. I am from Birmingham so I guess that means I need to eat lots of McDonalds and Burger Kings!
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There were literally hundreds of other points that Glenn, Tom and Will covered over the two hour Q+A but I was suffering from a massive information overload and so only managed to remember the main points! If I remember any more over the coming weeks then I will try to add them into the list.
I have never really paid attention to Nutrition before, believing it to be one of those things that only the Elite need to worry about. Talking to Glenn however really changed my approach to the topic as he made me realise that consuming the correct foods can really help you, not only with performance, but recovery, health and overall well being as well. Unfortunately, for the past week I have been living in a hotel with the 70 other new Graduates that are starting at the same company as me so I have been eating pub food every night. Unless tequila and burgers have some magical nutrition properties that I don’t know about then this week has not been a good start to my new healthy eating plans!
The day finished up with two sessions of drills taken by both Tom Parsons and William Sharman. Tom took us though the plyometric drills that he performs several times a week to ensure that he is warmed up properly and not letting his running technique drop. He took us through Bounds, Skips, Hops and Knee Ups; all of which I had never performed before and found incredibly difficult. Muscles that I didn’t know even existed before were aching by the end of the session, which shows how weak and poor my running mechanics are! I am definitely going to incorporate a session of plyometrics into my training every week from now on.
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I really must extend my thanks to Jon Lee of UKA and Mary Wood of Mitchum for organising such a fun and informative day as well as Tom Parsons, William Sharman and Glenn Kearney for giving up their Sunday to answer the barrage of questions that the bunch of us fired at them.
More on Upcoming Masterclasses here
More on UK Athletics sponsor Mitchum here