October and already the Calendar is full

We've had a strange start to the season with the closing of our regular training facility and the movement of our secondary one. Practices have been less than ideal with I Love Water Polo kids coming twice per week and Competitive 14-20 coming 4x. They are using the same amount of space and time so running the older practice is a chore.

I'm glad we have had no time to shoot this month (no way to do so at this pool). That means legs, strength and speed are the focus. We still do ball work but not the powerful kind, just the technical type. Next week, when back at Pan Am Pool, the balls start to fly with players who have developed some strength and hunger to use it.

The first few games of the year, in the new Prairie Water Polo League, will have growing pains but it will be so much fun to coach a team in a game, work for a week or two on adjustments, and then play another team. That is what has been missing from the Canadian game forever and it's fun to be bringing it to life.

I am also looking forward to incorporating more of the sport science research we did last season into our training. That has started but will be much more important when shooting and when into the Specific Preparation part of the season. Right now it is all General Prep and we did research on specific technical things that have application in weeks ahead. By then I expect our initial research will be published as Dr. Marion Alexander is currently working on a draft of the summary data to be reviewed and put forward. I will be sure all coaches in Canadian clubs get this information, I am also going to ask to have it translated as I know a very bright and articulate young French athlete who could do this justice.

The fall has been so busy with club planning that I have not been able to set aside time to properly write this blog. But that should change and I will have a template of topics to write about in the weeks ahead ie Nutrition, Science, LTAD application, Technical Skills. I will seldom write about Tactics, this is for good reason. The majority of english language information published on water polo is tactical in nature, moving X's and O's on pages, and that all requires foundational skills that have not been addressed uniformly or even well. That is where my attention is focussed as other experts have tactics well in hand.

Fructose = Poison?

This blog will be a reference to the work of someone else that I think is important. I always talk to my athletes about nutrition as part of their development, learning and growth. Recently I have been talking to some of the teams about fructose and why it is something they should be looking for on labels.

Fortunately someone with a background in science and medicine has provided me a teaching aid for this topic. The University of California, San Fransisco's Robert H. Lustig, M.D. did a presentation as part of the Mini Medical School for the Public offered through the UCSF Osher Center for Integrated Medicine. His lecture is available online at the Youtube link I have provided with this blog.

It's a long lecture but the video is in short, 10 minute, clips so it is easy to view in parts. There is something for everyone in this piece, politics, business, history, biochemistry, all sorts of angles you can consider as the story is told.

I am not telling athletes that fructose has to be completely eliminated, they are kids and need some space to live. However, I want them to see it as a poison, as does Dr. Lustig. I am comparing it to alcohol for them as they know that can be part of a meal (glass of wine) or the root of major disease. This helps them understand moderation and reflect on the impact of different foods.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjxyjcvW7RE&feature=player_embedded#
(I still don't know how to embed these links so cut and paste the address in your browser address window)

Kellogg's, take a little heat yourself

Last week I had some fun on Facebook poking at the Michael Phelps bong story. This tale has now spun a few tantalizing sidebars that I want to use to breach the subject of nutrition and athlete health.

Today I read that Kellogg's dropped Phelps as a spokesperson because his actions were "inconsistent" with their corporate image. That made me wonder, "what is the corporate image"?

Should we immediately think of salmonella and tainted cookies when we hear Kellogg? Because they have done massive food recalls at least twice already this year. One was today when it acknowledged the link between salmonella and "Keebler Soft Batch Homestyle Chocolate Chunk Cookies". Talk about "making a mistake" and "letting down their fans". Phelps seems consistent with corporate image here because he gets roasted for a DUI after one Olympics (2004) then roasted for pot after the next (2008). What part of that is unlike Kellogg's repeated circulation of food that will kill?


Truth be told, when I think of Kellogg's I think of childhood obesity first. I fully understand kids eat the worst kind of sugar laced breakfast every day because it is marketed by companies like Kellogg's. Not just a subtle kind of marketing but full-on, multi-million dollar mind freeze marketing. It's marketing presented with a slick message that has the illusion of so much authority that you would be insane to question it. The kind that makes families think that not having sugar cereal on the table is "weird" or wrong in some way.

When I talk of sugar cereal I am not just referring to Frosted Flakes either. Here is the product ingredient list for "Special K" that supposed diet and lifestyle cereal (check out the 3rd & 6th most prominent ingredients);

Ingredients: Contains rice, wheat gluten, sugar, defatted wheat germ, salt, high fructose corn syrup, dried whey, malt flavoring, calcium caseinate, ascorbic acid (vitamin C), alpha tocopherol acetate (vitamin E), reduced iron, niacinamide, pyridoxine hydrochloride (vitamin B6), riboflavin (vitamin B2), thiamin hydrochloride (vitamin B1), vitamin A palmitate, folic acid and vitamin B12. To maintain quality, BHT has been added to the packaging.

As nutrition expert Mike Reid says "if you can't pronounce it, don't eat it".

But, if you don't buy the link to childhood obesity with Kellogg's processed foods because you just think kids are not "active enough" then maybe it's time to do some research into childhood diabetes as well. What role does processed food-in-a-box have to do with the amazing jump in childhood diabetes in North America in this generation? That is too much food science and nutrition detail for me to go into with a water polo coach blog.

So, ya, you can say that an Olympian like Phelps is not anywhere close to the image of Kellogg's as a company, but it has nothing to do with his apparent use of cannabis.

Sorry if you were looking for technical information on water polo today. I decided to deal with the "athlete machine" side of the sport instead.

Sport Nutrition

Having a few days without a blog entry tends to create a backlog of topics if you have been in the daily routine of writing about coaching. I am working on three specific topic areas motivated by this past weekends MWPA clinics which covered shooting and, to a much lesser extent, nutrition.

Two of these revolve around the techniques being taught by national coaches and being "expected" from athletes coming out of Canadian clubs. One blog will outline the shooting technique favoured in Canada today and hopefully show video and give a simple biomechanical description of the old method and the newer "Serbian" method. The other blog will talk about why this is a symptom of a huge disconnect between the national teams and the clubs developing 100% of the athletes for those teams. This modified shooting is the way Mike G. has been shooting since Darko began working with him as a Cadet 3 years ago.

Today, the topic is nutrition and that jumps ahead of the shooting dialogue thanks to Mike Reid, or club strength and nutrition guru who now advises us electronically from Sweden. Mike has a blog himself (http://michaelreid.typepad.com/) and this weekend it has a wonderful entry about artificial sweeteners. Mike and I see eye-to-eye on so much nutrition and lifestyle information that I am not going to repost his blog entry, I'll just direct you to it.

I love that he has located research about something that supports what I have known intuitively for some time but not been able to articulate due to a limited background in the science of nutrition (and limited hours to research that myself). Here is the conclusion from the research Mike has written about;
"... products containing artificial sweeteners may lead to increased body weight and obesity by interfering with fundamental homeostatic, physiological processes."

It is appropriate to post that link today since so many young club athletes had a great sport nutrition introduction from Jorie Janzen on Saturday. Jorie took a practical approach to this topic with our athletes by dealing with the big picture, avoiding preaching, and giving athletes specific examples of things they could relate to. I particularly liked how she made a differentiation between water and sports drinks and then talked about a sport nutrition plan. These are things the coaches can follow up when planning with the athletes of each team. The follow up will be easy since Jorie has added to our portfolio of support literature that will now be delivered to athletes over a period of time to reinforce the regular inclusion of nutrition planning in their sport lives.

This is the month, March, when all our youngest athletes (Atoms and Bantams) get their first comprehensive introduction to nutrition. We always use the Alberta Open as the test event to give young teams the chance to connect what they learn about nutrition to how they live while on the road. It's so easy when we have them in a hotel and on the bus for 5 days to exercise influence on what they eat and what thoughts they form in that regard. I am also working on a strategy to help bring athlete hydration to the bench during games in a way that is shared between staff and athletes.