ACU’s High Performance Sport Seminar 2022
The High Performance Sport Summer Seminar looked to highlight how contemporary research and the high-performance sport landscape interact with one another to ultimately improve athletic performance. The seminar was brought to you by world-leading practitioners and researchers, covering a range of areas in high-performance sport, from advancements in technology to rehabilitation strategies and specialist training techniques.
Dates: Tuesday 8 February to Friday 11 February
Time: 9am – 12pm
Where: Online event via Zoom
Cost:
Attend one day only: $50
Attend all four days: $150
ESSA CPD points available – 1 CPD point per learning hour (maximum of 15 hours) - please see the ESSA website for details.
The Schedule will be updated as speakers are confirmed
Tuesday 8 February |
Keynotes |
Professor Samuele Marcora - Mental fatigue and sport performance Professor Dave Martin - The performance landscape andbthe influence of research outcomes across the journey |
Wednesday 9 February |
Injury |
Dr Andrea Mosler – Hip and groin pain in athletes; how research has changed our understanding and management Dr Dawson Kidgell - Unravelling the mechanisms to clinically translate findings, and future directions and innovation Dr Jack Hickey - Changes in sport and clinical practice through research |
Thursday 10 February |
Performance |
Mr Nathan Heaney - HIIT considerations and the application of the Anaerobic Speed Reserve across varied performance levels Dr Lorena Torres‐Ronda - Implementation of technology in a human performance environment: insights from the elite to general population or vice versa? Dr Grant Duthie - Improving Performance with Technology |
Friday 11 February |
Combination |
Dr Jamie Whitfield - Fuels for the Fire – sports nutrition research in elite endurance athletes Dr Suzy Russell - Mental fatigue and recovery in sport: current knowledge, practical applications and future directions Ms Leigh Russell - Leading sport in a changing world –opportunities & challenges |
Professor Samuele Marcora’s research integrates exercise physiology with motivation psychology and cognitive neuroscience to better understand fatigue, endurance performance and physical activity behaviour. Professor Marcora has written numerous high-impact scientific publications and consulted for many organisations including Juventus Football Club, Mapei Sport, Honda Racing Corporation and ASICS. Professor Marcora is passionate about American football, weight training and motorcycling. In 2013, he rode a motorbike from London to Beijing to investigate fatigue in motorbike riders.
Professor David Martin has accumulated 25 years of experience working with Olympic and professional athletes and is widely recognised as an innovator and leader in high performance sport, with 110 peer-reviewed publications. He has worked with world-class coaches across cycling, skiing, combat sports and basketball. Australian world record holders, world champions and Australia’s only winner of the Tour de France have benefitted from his input. Professor Martin recently worked in the NBA where he served as the Director for Performance Research and Development for the Philadelphia 76ers.
Dr Andrea Mosler is a specialist sports physiotherapist and NHMRC Senior Research Fellow at La Trobe University where she is currently working on hip-related groin pain, injury prevention and women in sport research projects. Her PhD investigated the risk factors for hip and groin pain in professional male football players and was conducted while she worked at Aspetar, Qatar. Dr Mosler worked for 18 years at the Australian Institute of Sport. She has been an Australian team physiotherapist at many sporting events including the 2000, 2004 and 2008 Olympics Games and continues to practice clinically in conjunction with her research work
Dr Dawson Kidgell researches the neurophysiology of exercise, specialising in Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS). TMS is a non-invasive method of measuring the functional properties (neuroplasticity) of the human brain, in particular the primary motor cortex. To investigate his area of interest, he uses sophisticated stimulation and electrophysiological recording and analysis techniques, which include TMS, transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), spinal cord reflex testing, surface electromyography and single motor unit recordings. Dr Kidgell has authored 150 peer-reviewed journal papers that have examined the effects of exercise and non-invasive brain stimulation on the human brain.
Dr Jack Hickey completed his PhD thesis, ‘Hamstring strain injury: objective assessment tools and exercise-specific progression criteria during pain-threshold rehabilitation’, between 2015 and 2018. He has received awards from ESSA (Exercise and Sports Science Australia), ASICS and others for his research. Dr Hickey is an ESSA-accredited exercise physiologist (AEP) working in a range of private practice settings and specialising in musculoskeletal and sports injury assessment and rehabilitation. Dr Hickey consults to athletes with sports injuries and patients recovering from surgery. This consultancy compliments his ongoing research interests, which are focused on developing clinically relevant assessment tools and optimising exercise rehabilitation strategies to improve outcomes for injured individuals.
Nathan Heaney has extensive experience across a wide variety of high-performance settings, where he has provided strength, conditioning and sport science services to clients ranging from developmental athletes to Olympic and professional athletes. He has worked at the Victorian Institute of Sport, AFL Victoria and the Adelaide Crows. Nathan has a particular interest in the application of aerobic conditioning for both team sport and endurance athletes. He’s developed a number of conditioning-related conference presentations, poster presentations and peer-reviewed publications, which have allowed him to have a positive impact on how conditioning principles and methods are applied to sports, groups, athletes and individuals alike.
Dr Lorena Torres has extensive experience in professional and Olympic sports, working in leadership roles as the Sport Scientist and Research and Development Coordinator with the San Antonio Spurs (NBA), and Performance Director with the Philadelphia 76ers(NBA). She has a focus on athletic performance, sport science, technology and innovation, data analysis and visualisation, monitoring training and competition, load management, advance recovery, nutrition, and leadership and performance culture.
Dr Grant Duthie specialises in the analysis of team sport player tracking data and has held numerous roles across a range of sports, consults and sporting organisations. He teaches undergraduate sport and exercise science coordinating functional anatomy and the science and practice of resistance training at ACU. In addition, Dr Duthie also coordinates the contemporary issues in sport science and data analysis for high performance sport within the Master of High Performance Sport. He is currently supervising five PhD students undertaking research in a wide variety of sport science and strength and conditioning projects.
Dr Jamie Whitfield is a postdoctoral research fellow within the Mary MacKillop Institute for Health Research and an ESSA-accredited sports scientist (ASpS2). His work explores the effects of specific training interventions on training adaptation and the many cellular and molecular markers that underpin exercise performance.
Jamie’s research focuses on how changes in nutrient status and energy availability can alter cellular networks via nutrient-gene or nutrient-protein interactions and the resulting downstream consequences (ie, adaptation or maladaptation). His goal is to address how nutrient availability alters skeletal muscle metabolism, and how it can promote and/or inhibit training adaptation and improve outcomes across the spectrum of health – from pathology to performance.
Dr Suzy Russell is a postdoctoral research fellow investigating mental fatigue and recovery in partnership with the Australian Institute of Sport. Suzy has held various research positions working with novel recovery technologies in elite athletes and clinical populations, and she has a strong interest in improving athletic performance, particularly in team sport. In addition, Suzy is passionate about athlete and staff wellbeing and promoting mentally healthy sporting environments.
Leigh Russell has worked across the boardrooms, fields, courts and pools of Australia’s sporting industry in roles such as the CEO of Swimming Australia, CEO of Netball Victoria, GM Leadership and Development of the Gold Coast Suns Football Club, GM People and Culture of the Essendon Football Club, and National Career and Education Manager at the AFL Players Association. She has also been appointed to various boards and committees, including as Chair of the Women’s Football Council at Football Australia. Leigh is currently the Program Director (Sport) at Champions of Change. She runs her own consulting business.
If you are applying for ACU's Master of High Performance Sport (MHPS) or are a student already enrolled in the program, please note that the 2022 MHPS intensive program for the unit (ESXC652, Semester 1, Mixed Mode), is running as part of the online High Performance Sport Seminar Series, February 8th-February 11th. The content delivered above is included as part of this MHPS intensive program.
Semester 1 2022 applications for ACU's Master of High Performance Sport are open now. For more information, email the high performance sport course coordinator, Dr Paul Tofari - Paul.Tofari@acu.edu.au
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