Matt Goosey - Week 3

I cannot believe I have now been here for three weeks, its amazing out here and I am trying to make the most of the rest of my time here. My work is starting to change now and is likely to get a busier. The women’s basketball team have just left on a two week tour to Italy and so I will no longer be working with them. However I am now picking up more work with volleyball and women’s soccer which will defiantly expand my understanding for different sports.

As well as work in the gym I am being introduced to the different technologies that USF like to use to collect data with their athletes. The two main ones are GPS and Heart rate tracking with the women’s soccer team and Force plate data for most if not all teams. Its interesting to see how the coaches collect this data and how it is then put into place to effect the athletes training. This is hopefully something I will get to see in the remainder of my time here.

The full women’s soccer team has now returned and they’ve got a very intense few weeks before their season starts. Their first week back began with an intense set of conditioning tests, which began at San Francisco’s Kezar stadium (which is an amazing place!) where the athletes had to run 7x 400m laps within 1:30s with a 2:15s rest between laps. This was an intense first session back for the athletes which was then followed by another 2 different training sessions that day! High volume and high intensity work to try and get all the athletes aerobically fit before the start of the season.  

The presentation that at the start of the week went well, I think I did a good job of explaining the many uses of velocity based training and also the work I do with it back home. It was also great to sit and listen to the other interns presentation, which defiantly gave me a lot to think about in with programming and planning future training sessions.

I really feel like I’ve settled into living here and am just hoping that the next three weeks don’t go as quickly as the last!