It was most amusing to see full on research lectures with screens of data as you would expect at a science conference, interspersed with audience participation sessions of the latest in step aerobics! 150 people jumping up and down in their civvies to banging techno in a conference room at 2pm is and strange sight. My talk was last and ended up being about E9 for fear factor as the tech guy messed up and crashed the AV system, so my nice slides of climbing and clips from E11 disappeared and I had to ad-lib my lecture with no slides. Scary. Everyone still clapped at the end, so I guess I got through it. But it’s not something I want to repeat in a hurry. As I was saying to the audience about risk sports – bold climbers don’t like surprises and like to know in great detail the tasks they face in advance.
The main part of my talk was to try and relate why I turned from an inactive kid who despised school sports to a pro athlete. I told them that I was fairly low confidence as a kid because I’m not a very outgoing and extrovert person, so the competitive and win/lose situations of sport (amplified by the cut throat world of pecking orders among kids) was always a negative experience for me. I felt that a lot of other kids also weren’t ready for this sink or swim world and therefore turned away from sport. When I discovered climbing, it washed all that away because it could be whatever I wanted it to be – individual, team, competitive or not, explorative or light-hearted. So I could move from a gentle break in to maximum commitment as and when I was ready. I told them that I climbed a world class route on the same crag I started climbing on as a timid kid – how cool is that – normally elite level sport takes you far away from the experience of the first steps, not necessarily so in climbing. I also told them I thought they should borrow some ideas from the world of business and internet to help appeal to a broader range of youngsters. Web 2.0 is a remarkable real time worldwide study in behavioural techniques and engaging user attention and motivation. I am certain there is stuff to be learned from that. I also think sport/health promoters need to look at the Long Tail idea that is buzzing in the business world and recognize the power of it’s ideas in reaching diverse groups with their own codes and vales such as teenagers.
Anyhow, here is a quick zap through the field of exercise promotion as it stands right now:
Matthew Lowther, who is the Scottish exec. policy coordinator on physical activity showed us data that suggested that the Scots have one of the best designed strategic plans in the world (!) for motivating and facilitating the public to get off the couch and exercise to stay alive. I guess that shows just how deep the problem of an inactive society runs in Scotland. Depressing really. I liked his slide showing what things should be like with pictures of parks with a sign “MORE BALL GAMES” instead of “no ball games”. When he was talking about creating new environments for sport to take place I couldn’t help but feel a touch of frustration that not enough folks, especially kids know about the great massive (and free) playground out there called the Highlands – plus all the places closer to home like the Dumbarton’s and the Auchinstarrys.
Dalia Malkova was talking in her nice Russian accent about sports nutrition myths, especially good practice in carbohydrate loading for endurance sport. It’s quite a complicated picture but the main things were again reinforcing the importance of rapid munching of high GI carbs after you train (must be inside 2 hours post workout for hormonal reasons). Eating high GI carbs before training can help give you a higher glycogen load going into the exercise, but it seems to subsequently drop off more rapidly during the exercise compared to eating low GI. I’m going to write up something in detail about carbs for climbers soon.
“Motivator to the Hollywood stars” Ali Campbell gave a good talk, which was typically a little high on cheese content as much motivational content can be. But it was still very good. He classified people’s deeper life motivation as either “moving away from pain” or “moving towards pleasure”, the latter being the better but more difficult strategy to adopt. I recognised what he said in climbers I’ve seen and coached and suggest that there are climbers who are in the sport to move towards pleasure but their regular regime of climbing activity and thought is centred around moving away from pain. I’ve thought a lot about this lately for my climbing coaching and feel I am learning a lot right now – with much more to discover yet I think.
John MacLean the medical director at the Hampden sports medicine centre (THE place to go in Scotland if you have a sports injury needing treatment) gave an excellent run through of sports medicine today. His ‘gore’ slides of breaking legs, arms etc were awesome and after the talk I asked him about the rationale behind using ice on acute sports injuries to reduce inflammation and pain. My question arises because the body has evolved for many an age to fine tune its inflammatory response – so why should we start interfering with it? I asked the same question to my sports med lecturer back at uni and got a fudgy answer. This time, John clarified rather better. It turns out there are still two camps of opinion, one feeling that the natural course of the body’s response should be left to run its course, and the other feeling that part of that evolved response is to prevent the injured athlete weight bearing/using too early and causing more damage. Anti inflammatory treatment of acute injuries combined with careful re-introduction of appropriate rehab is essentially ‘more intelligent’ and prevents the rapid loss of muscle tissue that goes with immobilisation of an injured limb.
The afternoon sessions saw several experts on obesity putting their cases for the best ways to get children off play stations and away from a path to being round adults. Lyndel Costain shone a cold scientific beam on the popular ‘celeb’ diets and reflected what we all knew deep down anyway; they only work where they tip the energy balance negatively. The sad fact is that most people (2 thirds I think she said) who lose weight fail to keep it off in the long term. So the emerging picture is that the only way to cure the worldwide obesity epidemic is to prevent people from getting obese in the first place. A big ask. But at least we know where to direct our efforts.