Articles
From High School, to High Performance: Sprinting Tips for the Development Coach
The majority of coaches can tell you that training high school and elite athletes should be different, but what does this look like in application? How do you as a coach adjust the details of your training to provide an environment that allows your athletes to develop the abilities that elites execute so well? ALTIS World long sprints coach Mike...
Stuart McMillan – The Olympic Games experience
ALTIS Performance Director, Stuart McMillan takes centre stage in the fourth of our post-Rio interviews. In this Q&A, Stu shares unique experiences gained through coaching over 70 athletes to 9 Olympic Games - both summer and winter. Which Olympic Games have you coached at? I've coached actively at: Salt Lake City 2002, Torino 2006, Vancouver-Whistler 2010, London 2012, Sochi 2014 and Rio 2016. I also coached athletes...
Akeem Haynes reflects on Rio
Following a fourth place finish in the 100m at the 2012 Canadian Championships, Akeem Haynes was named to the Canadian Olympic team as part of the 4x100m squad. Frustratingly however, he did not actually compete at the London Games. Fast forward four years, a very different scenario: Akeem Haynes, 24, stood on the start line, ready to lead off Canada's 4x100 m men's...
Coach Pfaff on coaching at the Games
The second of our post-Rio series features Coach Pfaff. In this quick-fire Q&A, Dan reviews some of the challenges faced at the 2016 Olympic Games, and shares his solutions. Dan - thanks for joining us. How many athletes were you coaching in Rio? I was directly responsible for 4 athletes: Greg Rutherford, Fabrice Lapierre, Christabel Nettey, and Yosiri Urrutia. I also consulted with 3...
Olympic Games – performance and pressure
Our post-Rio series of articles and interviews will blend experiences of the ALTIS athletes and coaches, with guest insights into themes relating to the Games. Kicking off this series is an interview with esteemed Coach, and friend of ALTIS - Mike Hurst. Born in 1951, and raised in Sydney Australia, Mike is a Coach with over 35 years' experience in Track &...
How Perspective Creates Success
By Ian Warner The interesting thing about success is that to become more successful, we have to help others achieve success. What does this have to do with the sport of track and field? Everything. Because success in this sport is about relationships. And relationships require perspective when communicating with others, especially for track and field athletes. For relationships to...
Series 16: Ameer Webb
As the USA Track & Field Olympic trials get underway in Eugene, we caught up with sprinter Ameer Webb on his season so far and hopes going into the event. "It’s going pretty good, it has been exciting" reflected Ameer. "I’ve put in a lot of hard work but when you see a 19 as an opener, it makes you...
How Collaboration Leads to Success: A Comparison of Walt Disney and Performance Therapy Best Practices
By Rick Wade Growing up in Southern California, I got to experience Disneyland more often than most people. The “Happiest Place on Earth” draws huge crowds every day of the week, all year long, and adults enjoy it as much as kids. That’s not an accident—Walt Disney paid incredible attention to the details that are most meaningful to people looking...
Performance Therapy: What Is It and How Is It Applied?
By Dr Gerry Ramogida If you have followed the ALTIS Twitter feed and read Facebook posts or other articles in this blog-post series, you have likely seen the term “Performance Therapy,” with some description of how therapists are integrated into the training environment. But what is really meant by Performance Therapy? Is it a case of simply having treatment provided...
Communication – Maximizing Impact in Coaching
It’s a truth universally acknowledged that words have power: The effective use of words can fast-track learning, build emotional connections, develop mutual trust, and bolster positive coach-athlete relationships. Communication – the spectrum When thinking about communication, many of us think in the context of words alone. However, the way we communicate with the world has many more layers than that....