Schedule for Students

With the new school year here, we are hitting the ground running!  Things have been calm for the past few days, but now it is time to rock and roll.

Here is the schedule for the coming events:

Tuesday, August 19th
2-3 Student Seminar
3:15-5:15 SPEC Training

Wednesday, August 20th
8:30-12 CPR Training

Thursday, August 21st
8-4:30 Orientation

Saturday, August 23rd
8-12 In-service
2-5 Picnic

Sunday, August 24th
Athlete Physicals - Check the signup sheets

Monday, August 25th
First Day of Classes

International Society of Biomechanics in Sports Annual Conference Recap - Part 2

We always love the opportunity to brag about our students... here is a list of all of the presentations that were given by students during ISBS.

POSTER SESSION
THE USE OF REACTIVE STRENGTH INDEX-MODIFIED AS AN EXPLOSIVE PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT IN MALE AND FEMALE ATHLETES
Timothy J. Suchomel, Christopher A. Bailey, Christopher J. Sole, Jacob L. Grazer, and George K. Beckham

LOWER EXTREMITY JOINT VELOCITY COMPARISONS DURING THE HANG POWER CLEAN AND JUMP SHRUG AT VARIOUS LOADS
Timothy J. Suchomel, Glenn A. Wright, and Jonah Lottig

REACTIVE STRENGTH INDEX-MODIFIED: A COMPARISON BETWEEN SIX U.S. COLLEGIATE ATHLETIC TEAMS
Timothy J. Suchomel, Christopher J. Sole, Christopher A. Bailey, Jacob L. Grazer, and George K. Beckham

A COMPARISON OF BASEBALL POSITIONAL DIFFERENCES WITH REACTIVE STRENGTH INDEX-MODIFIED
Christopher A. Bailey, Timothy J. Suchomel, George K. Beckham, Christopher J. Sole, and Jacob L. Grazer

THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE REACTIVE STRENGTH INDEX-MODIFIED AND MEASURES OF FORCE DEVELOPMENT IN THE ISOMETRIC MID-THIGH PULL
George K. Beckham, Timothy J. Suchomel, Christopher A. Bailey, Christopher J. Sole, and Jacob L. Grazer

ORAL SESSION
USING KINETIC ISOMETRIC MID-THIGH PULL VARIABLES TO PREDICT D-I MALE SPRINTERS’ 60M PERFORMANCE
Zhanxin Sha, Christopher A. Bailey, Timothy C. Mclnnis, Kimitake Sato, and Michael H. Stone.

THE RELATIONSHIP OF FORCE PRODUCTION ASYMMETRY AND PERFORMANCE IN ATHLETES OF DIFFERENT STRENGTH LEVELS
Christopher A. Bailey, Caleb Bazyler, Chieh-Ying Chiang, Kimitake Sato, and Michael H. Stone

LEG DYNAMIC STRENGTH PREDICTORS OF A PRE-PLANNED CHANGE OF DIRECTION TASK IN NCAA DIVISION I SOCCER PLAYERS
Chieh-Ying Chiang, Christopher A. Bailey, Christopher J. Sole, Timothy J. Suchomel, Kimitake Sato, and Michael H. Stone

CHANGES IN PEAK ACCELERATION IN THE SNATCH ACROSS MULTIPLE ATTEMPTS IN TRAINING: A CASE STUDY
George K. Beckham, Kimitake Sato, Timothy J. Suchomel, William A. Sands, and Michael H. Stone.

LONGITUDINAL MONITORING OF COUNTERMOVEMENT JUMP MECHANICAL VARIABLES: A PRILIMINARY INVESTIGATION
Christopher J. Sole, Satoshi Mizuguchi, Timothy J. Suchomel, William A. Sands, and Michael H. Stone

DIFFERENCES IN SEMG BETWEEN NORMAL SQUATS AND ACCENTUATED ECCENTRIC LOADED SQUATS IN COMPETITIVE COLLEGIATE WEIGHTLIFTERS
Christopher MacDonald, Kimitake Sato, Christian Carter, Hugh Lamont, William Sands, Michael Stone, Michael Israetel, Jeremy Gentles, Jason Cholewa, John Garner, Michael Ramsey, and Guy Hornsby

Applied Session
GOLF BIOMECHANICS: IMPLICATIONS FOR PERFORMANCE AND THE LUMBAR SPINE
R. Barry Dale, George K Beckham

International Society of Biomechanics in Sports Annual Conference Recap - Part 1

Well, the International Society of Biomechanics in Sport Annual Conference is now over.  It is amazing how fast it flew by, especially after how long we have been preparing for it.  Dr. Kimitake Sato (and his supporting staff) has shown us all how well an international conference can run, and we are certainly in his debt for pushing so hard to make this event happen.

The ISBS annual conference was a great event for learning about new research and new perspectives in sports biomechanics.  It was also an excellent opportunity for us to make new friends and build our professional networks. It is easy to understand why so many people continue attending this event year after year. We get a great opportunity to see old friends, make new ones, learn a TON, and explore the cultures of the hosting country and other attendees. The best part about this whole event is that somehow we get to call it “work”!

For the majority of ETSU students, this was our first time at an ISBS conference. Despite our inexperience with the conference, we were welcomed with open arms and made to feel as if we had been here all along. Our research got some very good suggestions and feedback, and we also learned that there are some young, exciting up-and-comers within ISBS that one day we will be lucky to call colleagues. It was also great to get so many different countries and cultures right in the Millennium Center- we certainly made the world just a little bit smaller for the past 5 days.

There were quite a few awards that were given at the Banquet, and I think it is important we recognize these impressive scholars:

ISBS Fellow - Aki Salo, Wolfgang Potthast
Life Member - Hermann Schwameder, Young-Hoo Kwon
Jeffrey Dyson Lecturer for 2015 ISBS Conference- Richard Smith
Hans Gros Emerging Researcher - Neil Bezodis
New Investigator Award Oral- Pedro Morouco
New Investigator Award Poster- Nathalie Alexander

One year from now, ISBS is headed to Poitiers, France. We are so excited for the opportunity to experience another country- and see all of our new friends from ISBS again. See pics from the event here: http://on.fb.me/1qO0sgA

Upward Bound- Prospective Exercise and Sport Science High Schoolers

Those of us who are in the CESSCE or are involved in the Olympic Training Site eat, sleep, dream, and dream about this field. We are obsessed! We certainly weren't born this way- we were introduced to this field by mentors, teachers, coaches and outreach programs.

Recently we had the opportunity to talk about what we do with a slew of high schoolers from the northeast Tennessee and southern Virginia area. We got to talk about what we love most- exercise and sport science!

We had talks from Dr. DeWeese about what it's like to work with Olympic athletes, and from Dr. Sato about what you can do with an Exercise Science degree. Meg Stone talked about what the CESSCE does, and Dr. Mizuguchi taught a bit about what weightlifting is. Dr. Ramsey told us about the really important stuff- how you get in, what classes you have to take etc. We also had a couple of stations that kids rotated around, where they got to learn about electromyography (the electrical activity of muscles), force plates and force measurement, and about what makes us jump so high.

We had a great time with all the kids and their program leaders- we hope they learned something, and that one day some of them get as excited about this field as we are!

You can see more pictures on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ETSUCESSCE

Where are they going?

There are some pretty neat places our students are headed to or are already there.  This is just a few of our former or soon-to-be-former graduate students from this year:

Ryan Alexander -Sports Physiologist for US Soccer Women's Youth National Teams

Chris Bailey - Assistant Professor LaGrange College

Chase Edwards- Physical Therapy Student at Emory Henry University

James Hoffmann - Assistant Professor Temple University

Mike Israetel - Assistant Professor University of Central Missouri

Brian Johnston - Director of Athletic Training, East Tennessee State University

Keith Leiting - Athletic Trainer/ Strength and Conditioning Coach with Integration Sports, Taiwan

Tim McInnis - Assistant Professor LaGrange College

Jake Reed - Texas A&M

Coaches College Teaser

We have the majority of our speakers worked out for the Coaches and Sport Science College in December of this year.  Here are some of the speakers we have lined up:

Chris Carmichael

Owner of Carmichael Training Systems – Trainright.com. Chris is known for his coaching expertise with cyclists, as well as other athletes. Athletes who have excelled under his tutelage include Lance Armstrong, Saku Koivu (hockey), and Ed Moses (swimming). He has an impressive number of athletes who have won major victories at the Olympics, World Championships, and the Pan Am games.

Jon Carlock

Jon is the Director of High Performance Director  for the Special Forces - Green Beret’s at Fort Campbell. John will talk about Training the Elite Tactical Athlete with emphasis on special military populations.

Chris Layne

Owner of Total Sports Management, Chris is an agent who represents over 30 of the us top track and field athletes. Chris will talk about the role of an agent and the relationship between coach athlete and agent in preparation for major championships and elite level competition.

Dr. Michael Stone

Past President of the NSCA and Lab Director at ETSU will discuss Power Development for the Strength Power athlete.

Meg Stone

Lifetime Achievement Award by NSCA and CSCCa – Will talk on Coaches Education focused on the Elite and National Coach level.

Dr. Sato

Will demonstrate and collect data practically on the Catapult GPS Tracking System  - collect analysis and advise on how the data can be used to improve performance.

Dr. Satoshi Miziguchi

Head Weightlifting Coach for the ETSU Olympic Training Site at ETSU will conduct a practical session on the technical aspect of the Olympic lift and their derivatives.

Dr. Brad Deweese

Brad will discuss the Theory and Practical aspect of the Quadrennial Plan for Bobsled and many of the underlying principle of this plan are relevant for any sport. Brad will also conduct a practical session on speed development and agility training.

Olympic Day 2014 Recap

We just got done with an amazing day at Johnson City Memorial Park to celebrate Olympic Day.  We had lots of kids there to participate in sports activities, and to get a taste of some sports they may not have had exposure to, like weightlifting and rugby.  They certainly had a great time, there were smiles and laughs all around. I think we can count this as another successful Olympic Day celebration for the CESSCE, the EXSS Department, and the ETSU Olympic Training Site!

One of our goals with the Olympic Day is to show kids how much fun it is to participate in sports. We also want to make sure the youth get a chance to be exposed to sports that typically don't get the airtime that sports like football or baseball do. Not only is this beneficial for the kids, who get to learn about how much fun they can have in sports they may not have considered, but it also means that there might be more participants in some of these less popular sports. It is a win-win for everybody!

Ultimately, if we can give everyone who attends a chance to enjoy themselves and learn a bit about the wonderful world of Olympic sports, we are doing pretty well!

Happy Olympic Day everybody!

Check out our Facebook page for more pictures!

Congrats to our Award Winning Students!

Four of our students won some great awards today at the School of Graduate Studies Awards.  

Congratulations are in order for:

Ashley Kavanaugh, Outstanding Dissertation Award, EXSS Department

Matt Sams, Outstanding Graduate Student Award, EXSS Department

Tim McInnis, Outstanding Contributions to the Olympic Training Site

Keith Leiting, Day on the Hill Award

Great job guys!

Handle Barbell 2014 Results

We had a GREAT meet!  Here are results for all of those people who participated.  Click here to download: Handle Barbell Results

Announcing Our Involvement with the USA Canoe/Kayak Whitewater Slalom Team!

We are excited to announce that we are now an Olympic Training site for the USA Canoe/Kayak Whitewater Slalom Team.  Today marked our public announcement over at Burgin Dossett Hall on the ETSU campus. Check out the press release on the ETSU website: Click Here

Interested in lifting at the 2014 Handle Barbell Open?

Want the chance to compete in a meet run at an Olympic Training site?  Yes?  Here's your chance!  We host the Handle Barbell Open on March 22, 2014.  There will be: cash prizes for best male and female lifters, T-shirts with the Handle Barbell logo, videos of every lift available for download and immediate replay, and a live feed in the warm-up area (so you don't miss anything).

If you're interested and want to find out more, click the link down below to download the entry form. Questions can be directed to the meet director, Tim McInnis: mcinnist@goldmail.etsu.edu

Click to download

Is Punishment or Reward More Effective?

Pretty neat video from Youtube. Definitely relevant to us coaches!

Congrats to our lifters coming back from Colorado!

Hope Stockel (58 kg) got 2nd place in the snatch, 3rd place in clean and jerk, and 3rd place total

Alexis LiCalsi (63 kg) got 2nd place in the snatch, 2nd place in the clean and jerk, and 2nd place total

Jimmy McIntyre (69 kg) got 5th place total.

ETSU Supports Team USA-Opening Ceremonies

With Sochi just around the corner, it is time to get excited!  On Saturday, February 8, there is an event being held in the CPA Courtyard for everybody who is thrilled that it is time for the Olympics again.  Here is the schedule and some more information from ETSU's SORC. The event starts at 1PM! There is some other fun surprises to be found at this event... you'll just have to show up to see!


ETSU Events Page

1pm- Introduction of ETSU Olympic Training Site- Dr. Michael Ramsey

1:05pm- Olympic Ideals- Meg Stone

1:10- What is Olympic Weightlifting why is it important?- Meg Stone

1:15- Working with Bobsled athletes competing in Sochi- Dr. Brad DeWeese

1:25- Introduction of Resident Athletes and OTS Coaches- Tim McInnis

1:30- Weightlifting Club- Coaches

1:35- Being a Resident Athlete training at ETSU OTS

1:40- Closing remarks- Dr. Ramsey

1:45- Coaches and Athletes demonstrate lifts/teach lifts (to anyone!!!)

USAW Junior Nationals

We've got four of our athletes heading out this weekend to compete at Junior Nationals! We are SO excited to cheer them on an see them compete!

Hope will be lifting at 2:30pm MT on Saturday 2/1

Jimmy will be lifting at 4:30pm MT on Saturday 2/1

Alexis will be lifting at 8am MT on Sunday 2/2

Hunter will be lifting at 10am MT on Sunday 2/2

You can find more information here:

http://www.teamusa.org/USA-Weightlifting/Features/2013/October/25/2014-National-Junior-Championships



Here are our four lifters, and a little bit about them!

Jimmy McIntyre-
From Flowery Branch Georgia has been weightlifting for 4 years. He is currently training at the ETSU Olympic Training Site as a 69kg lifter. He competed in Peru at the 2011 Youth World Championships and placed 1st.

Hope Stockel-
From Flowery Branch Georgia has been weightlifting for 10 years. She is currently training at the ETSU Olympic Training Site as a 58kg lifter. She competed in Slovakia at the 2012 Youth World Championships and in Guatemala at the 2012 Junior World Championships.

Hunter Forte-
From Rutland Vermont has been weightlifting for 7 years. He is currently training at the ETSU Olympic Training Site as a 85Kg lifter. He recently competed in Chile at the 2013 Junior Pan American Championships as well as placing 2nd.

Alexis LiCalsi-
From New Port Richey Florida has been weightlifting for 3 years. She is currently training at the ETSU Olympic Training Site as a 63kg lifter. She recently competed in Peru at the 2013 Junior World Championships as well as placing 3rd place at the 2012 Junior National Championships.

Check out the first installment of summary papers from the Coaches and Sport Science College

Each year that we have had the Coaches College, there has been a poster session.  During the breaks, this has allowed the poster presenters to interact directly with coaches and sport scientists that can utilize the information. It is a great experience to attempt to bridge the gap between science and practice.

There are two categories: Sport Science and Coaching/Coach Education. The Sport Science Category is aimed around the specific use of scientific principles to improve athletes, and also includes miscellaneous sport research not found in the Coaching/Coach Education category. The Coaching and Coach Education category is geared toward the specific things that a coach might do to improve his or her athletes.

Click the page in the top navigation bar to check it out!

A huge THANK YOU! to our sponsors

Our main Sponsor this year was Jeff Hsu and Integration Sports.

Leo Totten, of Totten Training Systems was also a significant, and long-time sponsor. He also sponsored the coach education category of our poster awards.

Perform better provided some very high quality backpacks for conference-goers.

And last, but not least, Dennis Tumlin of Coca-Cola for donating PowerAde.

2nd Day Summary from the 8th Annual Coaches College

 We had a great second day, with another great set of interesting presentations.  Thanks for keeping up with us on twitter, and stay posted in the coming months for information on next years Coaches College!


Here are some basic summaries of big ideas from the presentations:



Dr. Bill Sands- Mental Toughness?: It isn't clear if mental toughness is entirely a concrete entity.  As a psychological construct, it is very hard to measure, and is mixed within the literature. If we assume that it is trainable, here are four major things to work on: control, challenge, commitment, and confidence.

Brian Johnston- Sports Medicine Considerations in the NCAA: The relationship between sport scientist, coach and sport medicine staff is integral to both the development of the athlete, and the best chances of avoiding injury.

Dr. Brad DeWeese- Sports Nutrition: Nutrient timing is key for optimizing performance gains and maximizing adaptation.  A flexible nutrition plan tailored to the athlete is important for effectiveness and adherence.  Ketogenic diets may not be the best for strength power athletes.

Dr. Satoshi Mizuguchi, Dr. Kimitake Sato- Squats A-Z: Determination of squat depth should be made based on internal knee angle, not by other measures.  Stress from squats on the structural components on the knee are well under their limits. A double body weight squat helps to maximize your gains from explosive training. Until you reach somewhere near these strength levels, resistance training is very important.

Dr. Mike Stone- Pulling movements A-Z: Weightlifting variations are key for developing rate of force development and explosive abilities in athletes.  Remember that the second pull is by and large the part that has the most transfer to performance, thus the first pull and the catch are less critical in a training program.

Last Session of a Great First Day

Today has a been a great day of talks and some very enlightening information from our presenters! Here is a short breakdown of everything that we have gotten in the presentations:

Training Principles and Theory: Dr. Stone talked about what principles and concepts govern our understanding and our application of training to athletes. There are a number of physiological considerations, especially with regard to adaptation that we have to take into account to maximize the potential improvement that our athletes are able to make.

General Concepts of Modern Periodization: Dr. Hornsby summarized the history and development of our use of periodization as a concept of training. He traced this into our current understanding of more optimal training planning, into the phase potentiation/block periodization commonly used today.

Periodization for Football: Meg and Dr. Stone elaborated on how important strength and proper planning of training is to high level performance in football.  Ben followed this up with extensive information about how to fit conditioning into the whole picture.

Lessons from Rugby: Clive spent a great deal of time speaking about his experiences integrating sport science and strength and conditioning.  He gave some very interesting information about how performance monitoring is able to direct and shape the training of his rugby squad.  Top man!

Speed Training: Dr. DeWeese broke our understanding of optimal sprinting into only a few things- apply vertical force quickly, train short to long, and when you have newer/out of shape athletes, you can encourage great technique by training on a slight incline. He also hammered home the point that you should increase stride length organically through increasing strength and rate of force development, not by forcing it via other methods!

And finally: The roundtable, where some great questions and answers were exchanged. Here is a couple that were covered: "How do you structure drills for athletes that come back from breaks out of shape? How do you apply data collected from GPS units? How can we build a strong relationship with sport coaches? With Usain Bolt being so much taller than his competition, at what point does height become detrimental?"

Opening day for the 8th Annual Coaches College

We are starting to fill up with attendees for the Coaches College. Lots of people willing to brave the 20-something degree weather this morning to come!