TRAINING OF ATHLETES

Taranaki Daily News, 14 January 1933, Page 4

TRAINING OF ATHLETES

CANTERBURY TEAM’S METHODS.

APPLICATION OF MODERN MODES.

The changing modes of training in keeping with the scientific study of an athlete’s muscles were commented upon by A. M. Tiffen, a member of the team from Canterbury University College, in speaking of his tour to a News reporter yesterday. Nowadays, said Tiffen, coaches have entirely discarded the monotonous rounds of jogging exercise that a few years ago formed such an important part of training operations. Instead, athletes were now encouraged to devote time to a kind of .rapid mark-time exercise in which the trainee raised his knees high and alighted on the ball of the foot before sinking back on the heel with a peculiar motion which brought considerable play on to the calf, thigh and ankle muscles. Once the correct method was understood an athlete in training was expected to do this exercise at a rapid pace. “This type of training does a most efficient job,”' Tiffen added. Skipping, with attention to lightness and spring, was never out of place, but a new method, which figured largely in the training of boxers, was a system of walking backwards. Tiffen mentioned that the process of walking backward with a training step was invaluable as an exercise to impart spring and quick footwork.

Some of the Taranaki spectators who saw J. W., Gilmour’s action in distance running may have wondered why he did not shorten his magnificent stride to sprint proportions in contesting a keen finish. This was explained by Tiffen as one of the recommendations brought back from last Olympic Games. There the consensus of opinion favoured no shortening of a natural striding run. On the contrary, to speed up a finish, a natural strider was encouraged to try to lengthen his stride, a very difficult matter to a tiring runner who has already given of his best. In the high jump, Tiffen confessed to be performing below standard. With the rolling leap he has developed in accordance with modern ideas, one should be able to reach sft. 6in. or sft. 7in. with comparative ease. For - a right-hand jumper the method was to approach the bar on a short, slanting run without undue speed. The spring was made off the right foot, but the body was turned in mid-air so as to roll over the bar and land facing the direction from which he had come. In this style of leap, as, in fact, in all styles, many competitors, and Tiffen smilingly included himself in the fault, either took off too far away or jumped into the bar. Timing the jump then; he said, was a most important factor for success.

G. McGregor, captain of the Canterbury team, was described by Tiffen as an all-round athlete who specialised in field events. His method of throwing the discus, which at Stratford travelled an inch short of 119 feet, was American, and if practised assiduously was bound to add many feet to any amateur’s efforts, because the body had to work in perfect co-ordination with the final swing, of the arm and the flight of the discus. No jerky motion would ever bring satisfactory results.

Tiffen considered J. D. Carmichael a fine type of sprinter, but mentioned that in Wilson and one or two others the University had men who could possibly register faster times. The sprint runner, he believed, had also to be a stylish, runner and in training had to concentrate upon the development of his chosen style firstly in getting off the mark and secondly in striking his stride immediately.