I woke up today feeling refreshed after 9 hours of sleep—something
that I am rarely ever to do. I headed down to breakfast and then we had our
first lecture of the day. It was a nutrition lecture given by Alicia Norris, a
sports dietician at AIS who works with football and volleyball. She covered the
basics about nutrition and the importance of each macronutrient for athletes
and what effects they have on their training and recovery. I always enjoy
hearing talks about nutrition because since becoming vegan, I have developed
very different views on what it means to have a healthy and balanced diet. Although
she did not provide any new information for me, I found it refreshing that some
of the information she was saying tended to steer clear of the fad diets currently
going through the US, some of which are endorsed by nutritionists. I also liked
that she emphasized that with a well-balanced diet, it was unnecessary for
athletes to take supplements, whether they be vitamin supplements or protein
supplements.
Our next lecture was about Injury Prevention and it was
given by Damian Raper, a physio at AIS who works with netball, volleyball,
track, rugby, and football. He also did not provide too much new information—it
kind of felt like an overview of what we learned in our introductory class for
athletic training. What I did find interesting was that as a physio in the AIS,
his role included more than that of a normal physical therapist in the US. In
fact, a lot of his duties are duties that athletic trainers in the US are responsible
for. For example, he attends most practices and competitions of the sports he
oversees and provides some immediate care if his athletes get injured. In the
US, most physical therapists stay in the clinic and only care for an athlete
once they are ready to begin their rehabilitation after an injury.
After a quick lunch break, we headed to our third lecture of
the day about Recovery with Nathan Versey, a recovery physiologist at AIS.
Since the athletic training classes I have already taken, have not focused too heavily
about the recovery process, this lecture was a bit more informative than the
others. He started off by teaching us about the Supercompensation Theory that
states that even though recovery and regeneration will occur with time, it can
be accelerated and that is where we come in. He taught us about different
recovery techniques, focusing on sleep and periodization since nutrition has
already been covered earlier that day. In addition, he mentioned other techniques
like stretching, massage, compression garments, cool downs, relaxation
techniques, and hydrotherapy. Once we finished learning about hydrotherapy, it
was time to head to the contrast pools to test it out. Contrast therapy is the
combination of immersing yourself in cold water and then hot water. Since we
were a group of 20 people, we had to split up and take turns. My group started
off in the hot tub (about 35 degrees Celsius or 95 degrees Fahrenheit) for 2
minutes, then immersed neck-deep into the cold tub (about 10 degrees Celsius or
50 degrees Fahrenheit) for 1 minute, then hot tub for 3 minutes, cold tub for 2
minutes, hot tub for 4 minutes, and finally cold tub for 3 minutes. It was not
nearly as cold as I thought it would be. Don’t get me wrong—it was freezing and
I did not enjoy it, but I had imagined it to be way worse. Experiencing that was
also good for me because now I have more insight into how it feels and can
better explain it to my athletes.
Between that last lecture and dinner, we had a couple hours
of free time so I went on another long run around the outside of campus, and
felt very refreshed after that contrast therapy. Then was time for dinner and
as soon as dinner was done we were lost and had no idea what to do. There is
nothing to do around AIS at night because the athletes go to bed early and
there are only residential areas outside of the AIS. Since there was nothing
better to do, we squeezed into the tiny common room and watched some television
because Seinfeld was on and then Modern Family. Unfortunately since Australians
do not believe in central heat, we were all trying to keep warm using the small
space heater and needless to say it was ineffective. After we could find no
other programs to watch, we settled on Everybody’s Fine, which turned out to be
a very depressing movie. The beginning was sad and made people look heartless
and then the end is so sad it’s impossible not to tear up. It wasn’t even late
when that ended, but we all decided to head back to our rooms to sleep because
nothing could brighten up our moods after such a somber movie.
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