The Sport Slice

Hey guys, welcome back! So, over the weekend I was over in London playing on the Leinster senior team in division 1 of the English Inter Counties. In what was a very successful weekend, I helped the Leinster team finish second in the division, securing a play-off place where we will face stiff opposition from three other English counties to fight for promotion to the premier division, the best in English badminton! It was a brilliant weekend and a very enjoyable one with some tough games all round. First off, we faced Devon who we beat 8-3. This was a brilliant result for us and a flying start which we had hoped for. Those 8 points were well needed as all the teams around us seemed to be catching up. We followed this up with a 6-5 win over Middlesex to round up the play for Saturday. A massive 14 points gained today which kept us in second and with the help of some other results between the other counties we were in a commanding position in staying second to reach the play-o...

Hey guys, welcome back to my blog. For this post I am going to talk about how we should warm up before a training session and I will also give you an example of my warm ups. Hope you enjoy! Warm ups in my opinion are a vital component of training. Every athlete,in every sport should do a warm up. The point behind warming up is that it gradually warms up our body temperature which decreases risk of injury. Skipping a warm up completely can be extremely detrimental not only to your performance but you can also pick up an injury easily because your muscles aren't warm. A warm up should last roughly 15-20 minutes. Dr Ian Jeffreys developed the framework RAMP protocol which allows for activities to be easily classified into a warm-up sequence. 1. R aise 2. A ctivate and M obilise 3. P otentiate (or performance) Phase 1: Raise The aim of the raise phase is to increase our body temperature, heart rate, respiration rate, blood flow and joint viscosity. This first section of t...

Hey guys, so for this post I have done some in depth research into the stages of injury and the best ways to try speed up your recovery. Hope you find this interesting and don't forget to comment and share!   Injury can range from a tear or pain in a joint, muscle, tendons and ligaments to breaks or dislocations. The most common injury seen in elite athletes is an ACL (Anterior Cruciate Ligament) tear. This is most commonly seen in footballers and happens mainly when a player is jumping to head the ball and as they come down to land their knee twists rupturing the ACL. Injury prevention is important in the life of an athlete as it is necessary for them to keep strength across all their body muscles. Strength and conditioning is the most utilised method of injury prevention and it is applicable across all sports. When an injury occurs, it follows three stages: Inflammation, Proliferation and Remodelling. The Inflammation stage is the first stage of injury and may last be...

Hey guys, As promised here is my post on Foam Rolling(Self-Myofascial Release). Hope you guys find this interesting and can use this information in your training. Foam rolling can be a handy method used by many athletes to acutely increase range of motion without a decrease in muscle activation or force (MacDonald et al.,2013, Cheatham et al., 2015). I find that a quick bout of foam rolling (self-myofascial release) is extremely beneficial just before training as it increases our range of movement and it helps warm up our muscles. I would always finish training sessions with foam rolling (about 30 seconds per muscle group) as I find it helps aid recovery and loosens out the muscles. Rolling for longer than 30 seconds per muscle group can be counter productive! Athletes across all different types of sports should use self-myofascial release as a method of recovery after training to speed up the rate at which muscles regain their normal size. Foam rolling can also be seen...

Hey guys, I thought I'd post on something interesting I heard people talking about the other day. Myths of stretching versus the truth. It's quite an interesting topic if you ask me and something that all sports people should be doing every day. So here it goes... 1. You should always stretch before you workout (Myth): You don't NEED to stretch before you workout. Yes, it is recommended you do stretch but not all activities require stretching. For those of you into your running, you should look more towards the dynamic stretching techniques which you do during your warm up. This can include high knees, heel flicks, shoulder rotations etc. These can be done while you warm up. 2. Everyone should do the same kind of stretching: This is false. Not everyone needs to do the same stretching as the person beside you. Sure everyone's body is different and requires different stretches. Second of all, different sports require different stretching also. There are no rules as ...

Hi guys, for this post I will be talking about my trip to Kazan, Russia for the European team championships! We left on Saturday the 10th of February on an 11am flight to Istanbul where we then got our connecting flight to Kazan. A long, long day of traveling that was. We arrived in Kazan at 3am, each and every one of us knackered. I just wanted to fall into bed. It was 4am before we got into our beds... Some sleepy faces were seen the next morning at breakfast. Sunday 11th: Today was our first proper day here in Kazan and we used it to try and recover from our long travels. We slept most of the morning after we got breakfast. All we did was go for a hit in the practice hall from 4-6. When we got back we had time to explore around the local area and to our delight we found a shopping mall connected to our hotel. We walked around the shopping center looking for somewhere to eat which was quite a task as everything was in Russian. We found somewhere eventually and got some lovely f...

So, as many of you know my sport is badminton and this weekend is the Irish National Championships. I go into the weekend after some good results at the weekend in Essex where I played on the Leinster senior team against Essex and Ulster. Beating Ulster 7-4 and Essex 6-5, this leaves us second in the table going into the final weekend which is in March where we will hope to qualify for the play-offs for promotion to England's top league. With National's this weekend, I have been very focused and excited to play after being selected to represent Ireland at the European Women's team championships in 10 days time. So I am really looking forward to this weekend and my preparation has been going well. Leading up to a tournament I try not to put too much stress on my body while still training at the same time. Looking after your body is a crucial factor in being able to perform at the highest level in competition. This includes diet, sleep and training. Eating a balanced, healt...