Performance Coaching Conference Sprints / Hurdles / Jumps

Athlone IT, Saturday 17th September

Athletics Ireland is pleased to announce a coaching conference focusing on coaching in a performance driven environment.   This event will involve both domestic and international coaches who have experience coaching at the highest levels.  They will share their experience and impart knowledge on the methods used to assist athletes maximise their potential.  This is another event in the Coaching Network series and will combine the usual mixture of theory and practical sessions.

If you are a performance-driven coach this event has something to offer you. These occasions are designed to assist coaches to develop while also networking with other coaches and help build a better support structure for their own training group.  Please register HERE for €30. 

Timetable

09.30 – 10.00  Registration

10.00 – 11.00 Keynote – Paul McKee

11.00 – 12.30 Workshops

Hurdles – Volker Hermann
High Jump: Technical workshop – Deirdre Ryan
Long Jump – Femi Akinsanya
Pole Vault – Jim Alexander

12.30 – 13.30 Lunch

13.30 – 15.00 Workshops

Speed Development – Volker Hermann
High Jump: Plyometrics workshop – Deirdre Ryan
400m Hurdles – Hayley Harrison
Long Jump – Femi Akinsanya
Pole Vault – Jim Alexander

15.00 – 16.00 Planning – Hayley Harrison

16.00 Close

Workshop Details

Paul McKee will discuss his career as an athlete.  He will offer insights into his training and share lessons learned along the journey.

High Jump Workshop

The high jump technical session is aimed at performance coaches of athletes at a level of 1.65cm+. Coaches are invited to bring their athletes to the session, which will involve both high jump drills and jumping. There will be 8 spots available for athletes with their coaches.

Technical hurdles workshop

Hurdling is one of the most challenging events in athletics. The athletes need to achieve high horizontal velocity by executing a strict movement pattern in between the hurdles.  Most hurdlers are therefore dealing with difficulties in take-off into the hurdles, resulting in a greater loss of speed. Volker will examine means to avoid this and illustrate a rhythm-oriented approach to teach hurdling for beginners and advanced athletes.

Long Jump workshop

The session will include drills targeting specific technical issues.  It is aimed at those who are focused on performance and will facilitate further enhancement of technique.

Pole Vault Workshop

This workshop will look at both development and performance aspects of the event

Development

Talent ID for potentially good pole vaulters
Key skills to master in first year of pole vaulting
Other athletics events that compliment pole vault development

 Performance

To jump 5.00m and 4.00m is an 8-10 year plan – how to plan year by year to achieve this goal
Strength & Conditioning requirements for 5.00m Male vaulters and 4.00m female vaulters
The role of gymnastics in performance pole vaulting
Competition planning for performance athletes (both indoors and outdoors)
Coach development in support of above goals

Speed Development – Acceleration workshop

In modern speed training, the combination of strength and coordination results in performance.  The workshop will highlight some neuromuscular drills to improve acceleration performance and high speed mechanics, concentrating on the cognitive demands of sprinting. It will also demonstrate the demands of acceleration and the maximum velocity phase as well as the differences in technique and activation / movement patterns.

400m Hurdles workshop

This workshop will be a mix of practical and theory focussing on elements of performance hurdling.

High Jump – Plyometrics

This workshop will concentrate on plyometric exercises which are particularly relevant to performance high jumping.

Presenter BIOs

Paul McKee

Paul McKee is Athletics Ireland’s RDO for the north-west.  Paul is a former national record holder in the 400m outdoors and indoors and also contributed to a national record in the 4x400m relay.  He competed in the Sydney Olympics and won a bronze medal in the World Indoor championships in 2003.

Paul has coached a number of athletes to international level including Jason Harvey.

Jim Alexander

Jim Took up coaching in 1987 having been an ‘average athlete’  with a pole vault pb of 4.30m which was achieved in 1984.  He started in coaching to find out what he was doing wrong and subsequently discovered he preferred coaching to competing!  Jim has had some success with male vaulters  (Anthony McCreery achieved  the Irish Junior record of 4.90m in 2006 and Neil Young cleared 5.20m in 1997) but considers himself a specialist in coaching women’s pole vault.  Some of his achievements include coaching vaulters to European Junior (Erin Kinnear in 2003), European Indoors (Zoe Brown in 2009), European Outdoors (Zoe Brown in 2014), World Youths (Erin Kinnear in 2001), World Student Games (Zoe Brown in 2005), European U23’s (Zoe Brown in 2005) and Commonwealth Games ( Zoe Brown in 2002, 2006 and 2014).  Jim currently works with Ellen McCartney (Irish Outdoor Youth record of 3.60m in 2016) and Shane Martin (Irish Indoor Youth record of 4.30m in 2016)

Deirdre Ryan

2006 European Championships final, Gothenburg
2011 World Championship, 6th  place, 1.93 cm (1.95cm qualification round)
2011 National Record 1.95 cm
2012 Olympic Games in London

Deirdre is a former international Irish high jumper. She joined DSD, her local athletics club at the age of eight. After many years of trying a variety of disciplines, it she focussed on high jumping. From there her career developed through the ranks of schools and national championships culminating in placing sixth at the World Championships in South Korea in 2011, jumping a national record of 1.95cm and qualifying for the London 2012 Olympics. Between 2000 and 2013 Deirdre competed at numerous European and World Championships across all four corners of the globe from Birmingham, Berlin and Madrid to Korea, Doha and Beijing.

Deirdre spent many years training abroad in Germany, Belgium and Italy, affording her the possibility to train with some of the most world renowned high jump coaches, such as Gerd Osenberg, not to mention World and Olympic Champions like Tia Hellebaut.

Volker Herrmann

Volker Herrmann is a sprint and hurdles expert working at the German Olympic Training Centre in Munich.  Previously he was head coach to male sprinters at the German Sport University in Cologne.  Volker has lectured in Cologne in the fields of biomechanics and movement science. He has coached several athletes to international championship medals and has been a consultant to the German Athletics Association for female sprinting and hurdling since 2013.  He believes that "linking modern scientific knowledge with lasting coaching experience" is the key to success.

Volker also lectures for the IAAF internationally on courses and workshops for high performance coaches.

Femi Akinsanya

Femi is a former International Triple Jumper with a PB of 16.63m and current England Athletics Coach Mentor for Jumps. As assistant coach to Aston Moore he helped heptathlete Louise Hazel win Commonwealth gold and was also technical advisor to Phillips Idowu before his retirement.

Hayley Harrison

Hayley is the national event co-ordinator for hurdles and also an IAAF level 5 coach.  Working with her husband Drew, they lead a very successful coaching group in Limerick.  As an athlete Hayley competed for UK over a six year period, primarily in the 400m hurdles.  She also represented England in hockey and netball.  Since moving to Ireland she has been involved with athletes who achieved over 120 national senior titles and over 50 national records.  Athletes from the group have participated in major championships on 70 occasions with Thomas Barr becoming the latest Olympian.  Hayley works for Coaching Ireland assisting NGBs in how to design, implement & deliver coach and instructor education programmes.