Perhaps to end off, a video from the movie Any Given Sunday. I've no doubt that most of you have seen or heard this speech, but probably never connected it with sports science and high performance. Of course, there is a lot more to it, but it helps explain just how vital that expertise is. Some of the language is coarse (for sensitive readers), but the speech makes the point that "inches" matter. It inspires the players to seek inches, because those inches, when added up, "make the difference between winning and losing".
Sports science is involved in the quest for those inches, not necessarily on the field during the match, but in the training, during the hours of preparation, and the times when the cameras are not rolling. Consider that Michael Phelps won the 100m butterfly title by 0.01 seconds. Consider that the margin between winning and losing in shotput is 1 degree in the push-off angle. Consider that 9.69 seconds of 100m sprinting is the culmination of thousands of hours of training. Or that winning a Sevens world series, which might take 7 minutes of play in the final, actually comes down to thousands of hours of work, discipline and effort. Then you realise that if you fail to seek those inches, and if you fail to pursue every last millisecond, then whether you're an elite athlete or a marketing assistant at a shoe company, you're failing to achieve higher performance.
From the Sports Science Blog.
hi Mr. Vogel
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