The PASO Conference is divided up into two sessions: Theory and Practical. The theory session encompasses the first three days, and the practical work will all happen during the final three. We started off with a welcome from the usual suspects: Kurt, Andrea, Sunil, as well as the head of the USOC, and a typical visitors' tour of the OTC complex.
The first session was by Mike Pederson, entitled "The Road to Beijing" in which he gave an overview of what he considers are the most important factors to making athletes successful at the elite level. I took copious notes and will post them shortly.
After lunch, we got an introduction to the software package Dartfish, given by a USOC Sports Services staff member. Most of the information is available on the Dartfish website, but it was interesting to see the potential uses of the software, which has two main purposes: collecting and visualizing video data, and tracking and tagging the same video.
The video overlay comparisons were fairly cool, but I was most intrigued by the software's ability to capture sensor data. They did some neat things with pressure plates and accelerometers to measure the acceleration of a weightlifter's bar, graphing that data alongside video of the lift itself. Those technologies may not be commercially available -- I was told they were created in-house -- so it is uncertain if coaches in the fencing community could duplicate some of the more interesting uses of the software. It is, however, a useful opposition research tool, as long as enough video source material is collected and properly tagged.
The final session was again run by Mike Pederson, who talked about how he does opponent research without Dartfish. He notes the position on the strip of a touch, and an abbreviation of the phrase. The advantage of this method over video is that it can be easily done in real-time at a tournament without needing to go back, parse, and classify every action. You're still looking for the same thing -- trends and tendencies in where people prefer to be on the strip, as well as what actions they favor. We've done this at several NWFC camps, and if I can find those materials, I'll post them here as well.
Most of the coaches here are from Caribbean and Central/South American countries, so Spanish is the most-spoken language. The USOC has flown in people to do real-time translation via radio earpieces. I understand we're the guinea pigs for this system, which seems to be working well.
Day 1 is in the books; Day 2 should be more technical, with sport psych, strength & conditioning, and nutrition lectures.
3 comments:
Thanks Darius.
I'm very curious about the practial section of this event. Any chance you'll post some video?
I do not have a camera with me, and will likely be actually doing the practical sessions. I'll try to describe as much as possible.
There have been some USOC videographers taping the presentations, and I've been told that they're "for the IOC."
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