Whether you're a sports scientist, streaming
conditioning coach, or the actual weightlifting
coach, which has probably a broader role, or
if you play all of those roles, put the athlete
first and prioritize them and your relationship
with them. While I could have easily gotten tied
up with the data being, you know, quite analytical
and objective individual, my role in this was
to be a coach first and to make sure the athlete
is comfortable and they are part of this decision
-making process of the programming. Hi, Sham.
It's my pleasure to have you on Evidence Strong
Show for the fourth time. It's very weird to
ask you, but please briefly introduce yourself.
Well, again, firstly, thank you very much for
having me on for the fourth time. So my name
is Sham Chavda. I'm a program lead for the Masters
of Strength and Conditioning, Distance Education
and Middlesex University. I'm also the lead performance
scientist at British Weightlifting. Awesome.
And you have written a paper, another one, about
preparing an athlete for Tokyo Olympics. So that's
what we are. talking about. It's a case study,
quite detailed, so I'm excited for you to go
through it and explain. Let's start with what
was the plan and what the issues you were facing.
Yeah, so I think the first thing to highlight
is there's definitely a paucity of research on
the leak. individuals because they're so hard
to come by right and particularly like longitudinal
case studies on elite individuals becomes even
harder and there's not a lot of case study research
that has been published and to be able to contribute
to that is is obviously quite an honor so i think
it's important that case studies do get published
particularly at the elite level because it gives
people doing like influential statistical research
so like the typical research you read gives them
almost benchmarks and it gives them something
to to refer to but it also provides people with
a very candid outlook on what life is like outside
of the lab and when you are working with an athlete
and the barriers that you will face within the
elite environment so I think that was kind of
the primary target for this paper was to give
that level of insight and also to present maybe
a slightly different way of analysing information
to determine whether athletes are getting better
or worse. And that was all within the context
of quite a well -known barrier of COVID. And
on top of that, the additional barrier of being
a refugee athlete. So somebody who is outside
of a... normative system that operates in a way
which isn't you need to qualify via this route
but have a very different route to the olympics
okay so this this is the why of the study and
now in terms of these going to this plan so you
had almost three years to prepare for the olympics
what was the plan at the beginning and it ended
up being different obviously yeah it's a really
good question i was trying to take my myself
back to that time period I think it wasn't three
years to prepare for the Olympics. I wish we
had that long because there was so much uncertainty
and that uncertainty came from. One, not being
within an organization to take the typical qualification
route, not being able to go to any international
events, not formally knowing whether he was on
the refugee Olympic team. So, you know, the selection
occurred maybe about three months prior to us
going out. And then you've got the pandemic.
in between all of that as well. So there was
so much uncertainty. And I think that just adds,
I feel like coaches know this intuitively anyway,
but you need to have flexibility and fluidity
in your plan, right? But if you don't plan, you
plan to fail. So you need to have some form of
structure. So the first thing was we were focusing
on domestic competitions and, you know, breaking
national records and just self -improvement and
continually pushing this individual's own personal
barriers. Could you explain a little bit what
a refugee status is? A refugee is someone that's
fled their country for whatever reason, right?
And they're unable to return because it might
be dangerous or again, for whatever political
reason. So without getting too political, and
again, I'm not someone that has a great depth
of knowledge on this. The athlete himself is
now, you know, sits on many boards around a refugee
athlete representation. So he's definitely a
better go -to person. But essentially... If you
are a refugee, you will not have a passport of
the country that you've fled to, right? So therefore
you're not a citizen. And different countries
have different timeframes until you can sit the
citizen test to be able to obtain your citizenship.
During this period, he was not a British citizen,
but he was... I think it's called Remain to Leave.
So he could travel with a travel documentation.
Now he had a membership with our national gardening
body, which is British Weightlifting. So therefore
he could compete at domestic competitions, such
as regional events, and then our national events,
such as our English and British championships.
What wasn't clear by then, which is starting
to have a lot more clarity now for those that
do. watch the international events. The IWF,
EWF, Commonwealth Federation didn't really have
a stance on accommodating refugee athletes at
those competitions because they weren't assigned
to a specific country in that respect. So that
has now changed for the positive, of course,
but that's essentially where we were at back
in 2018 onwards. So hopefully that clears things
up a little bit there. The planning was around
more domestic competitions. And then as soon
as we found out there may be an opportunity or
he's in a pool of athletes that may get selected
to be a representative of the refugee team at
the Olympics, I suppose we made, we didn't make
the assumption he was already selected, but we
prepared for best case scenario because everything
else in between didn't really have a... a huge
amount of meaning because they weren't qualifiable
events so you didn't need to hit certain numbers
all we needed to know is right if you are going
to the olympics if you are selected we need you
to be in the best shape possible at that time
point if you are not selected it is what it is
but at least we've trained for you to be at your
best physical ability during that period and
that just comes down to you know general understanding
the periodization right of making sure we set
up on macro cycle. to the peak for the main event
and often not you'll have main events within
that time frame that you need to kind of hit
as a benchmark maybe or a qualifier etc because
we didn't have that we just set our own ones
in between that time period of finding out there's
a possibility through to actually being at the
games and we should also mention that not only
you didn't know but also the Olympics were moved
a year in the play through too so Let's keep
that in mind. How you decided to monitor, how
you decided to plan? We looked at... specific
neuromuscular measures so these related to jump
metrics or counter movement jump metrics collected
on force plate as well as isometric mid -bipole
and these were collected in the within the first
five days following a competition and you may
think well why i've done it after not in the
week of or the lead up but actually there's there's
a psychological part to that in that we opted
to do it after because one We didn't want testing
to be a potential barrier of him having to be
well rested and to not influence the test results,
especially during a taper, right? Yes. Which
is somewhat counterintuitive because most people
would use those. tests during a taper right but
also as the person who's doing the testing and
as a person who's making the decisions of what
goes on the bar and coaching the individual and
also knowing the individual if for whatever reason
the neuromuscular performance testing was done
the week of prior to get into competition if
that testing went down What psychological impact
would that have on that individual going into
competition? Would they then start to question,
you know, am I feeling strong enough? And there's
potential to put doubt in their head. And then
as a coach, it makes me think, well, I thought
the programming went really well. Why is it not
being reflected here? And does that then sit
in your back of your mind when you select the
weights? Am I going to go up five kilos or am
I now going to be more conservative? Because
in the back of my mind, I know that his ballistic
force is dropped by a significant amount and
peak force in the pull is dropped down. Oh, maybe
I should only jump up by two kilos, you know?
And I wanted to avoid that. And I think putting
it directly after competition, once he's had
one or two days rest, he's not going to be detrained
in that time period. So it still gives a really
nice reflection of the physical state he was
in going into that competition. But it also now
allows me to use that information to come up
with the next training block. So that was how
we kind of did the testing, the neuromuscular
testing. Unfortunately, we only did that for...
three time points because following that the
pandemic hit and we just lost all accessibility.
If these competitions would be very important
and let's say these would be the bronze, silver
or gold events for, would you be tempted then
to do the testing before the competition or you
would still not implement it? Well, actually,
this is something we've begun to implement with
our world -class program at British Weightlifting
is we may not do the isometric mid -thigh pull,
but we would use the jump. as a proxy of neuromuscular
readiness because we know propulsive impulse
is highly related to weightlifting performance.
We also know that it's incredibly sensitive to
change as well. Doing a jump is far easier. It's
less taxing for the athlete. So it doesn't feel
like they're having to do extra tests. So we
actually have a really nice case of an athlete
preparing for a, I'm going to say, I think it
was a World Juniors. And, you know, we had that.
individual's jumps during the general prep phase
we see it then during specific phase we then
see it during the taper it drops off and then
actually we're very fortunate force plates were
available i think two days prior to this individual
lifting so like well just just go jump on the
same plates as well that we have so they did
their jump sent it across we had a look at it
and there was this really nice super compensation
and then there was a medal followed by that so
for us it was like the perfect picture which
often isn't always the case right so based on
your question would i do anything different yes
we are doing something different we're actually
simplifying but that also brings me on to the
other stuff that we measured it is pivoting and
using the node sensor which we can measure barbell
velocity vertical velocity so later on in the
paper where especially we had to travel you know
for holding camps etc taking force pace might
not always be that easy but taking a little sensor
you can put in your pocket is is far easier so
for this case study we utilize that during our
holding camp and in the taper going into competition.
And we can see from one of the figures, figure
number six, the blocks leading up to the last
block, you can see there's a natural fluctuation
in barbell vertical velocity. Then it drops off
quite significantly. And then it starts to bounce
back up. By the end of the last block, you know,
we've got this super compensation. The same weight
was used for this measurement of vertical velocity.
And the assumption is if, and the literature
supports this, that same weight is moving faster,
there's been some positive physical adaptation
that's occurred. And that's noted in that figure,
figure six. So just to wrap up, for the first
part, so the pre -COVID era of training, you...
You used counter -movement jump and isometric
mid -type pull. Did you use sensor too then for
the velocity? You didn't. So you used force plates.
And then COVID hit. Correct. I'm trying to think
where the camp you were speaking of took place.
Yep. So we traveled. There's actually quite a
bit of stuff that influenced some of the decisions
that I couldn't put in the case study for two
reasons. One, it probably wouldn't have been
relevant for a scientific journal. And two, there
just wouldn't simply be enough word count. But
actually, so we had a holding camp maybe a couple
of weeks, a couple of weeks, I think a week or
so before games started. Two weeks before the
game started. Apologies. A few days were meant
to be spent in Qatar where the team met because
it had been the first time you got all these
refugee athletes. You know, it's quite a big
thing for the IOC as well. So that'd been the
first time the team met. And then people were
going to be sent off to different locations within
Japan that suited their sport and their training.
So, I mean, we were going to be sent to, I think
it was Wasada University, where there has been
some weightlifting research published in the
past. And we were really excited. I particularly
was very excited to go there. They were hosting
us. However, because of... COVID complications.
We had an extended stay out in Qatar and we didn't
get that opportunity. Also, during that period
we were in Qatar, we didn't have access to a
Benz bar. Oh. Yep. Which is often unknown considering
we're in probably the world's, one of the world's
greatest facilities for streaming conditioning.
So I'm not sure if there's any videos of it anywhere.
Maybe the athletes posted it itself, but. De
-intensification week, where we wanted to push
the intensity prior to getting into the table.
Snatches and clean and jerks were having to be
done in a learning spa, which you can imagine
for a mid -heavyweight athlete was less than
optimal, particularly with the barbell whip.
So the timing was often a factor. In addition
to that, we didn't really get access to a gym,
I think. maybe quite a few days after we found
out we had to stay there in Qatar for a certain
duration. So there were a lot of spanners in
the work. And I think at that point as a coach,
my priority wasn't of how am I going to implement
X training and that training. The first thing
was make the athlete feel at ease. Like, you
know, don't worry. use this opportunity to just
just rest and leave it to me to figure out where
we can train how we can train and i'll adapt
the training in a way that allows you to get
the best out of it even under suboptimal conditions
so that was a big yeah that was a really big
spanner in the works that i don't think many
people would have would have known about but
adapted as he does as all elite athletes do incredibly
well so this is the calling it when the how did
you call it suboptimal oh that was a generous
name yeah it's uh yeah but it was okay once we
got once we got to the the village training was
back to normal and that was uh that was good
so So when did you get to the village? It was
right at the start. So we would have been there
a few days before the opening ceremony. So we
were there the whole time, essentially. So we
had a good, I think, a good couple of weeks,
maybe just under a couple of weeks of training,
about 10 days of training. And obviously within
that time frame, the idea wasn't to train as
much as possible. Good intensity, good lifting,
and focus on recovery as a taper would, right?
Yeah. So we talked about the pre -COVID, where
the domestic competitions were, and we talked
a little bit about the post -COVID. So when the
athlete was selected for Tokyo and you know that
you are going, you had Qatar come and then landed
in Japan. Between these two, is this another
huge suboptimal and unplanned time where you've
been training, but it was a different training
because it was COVID time and lockdowns and so
on. So let's talk a little bit about that. Sure.
Yeah. So another interesting. complexity to this
case study is that the athlete was actually a
key worker over covid so not only was he an elite
athlete not only did he have the barrier of being
a refugee and the representation being an issue
into other international competitions but he's
also a mental health nurse so and it just i believe
he just finished university but he was still
studying as part of being a nurse so he was a
key worker and for anyone you know that was the
that was a key worker with no it seemed incredibly
difficult there's a lot of commitment so at that
stage he was a dual career athlete i suppose
would be the best way to describe it so what
we did we're very fortunate that The university,
so Middlesex University, were incredibly supportive
and they provided some equipment. The athlete
was also to source equipment from elsewhere as
well. I had some equipment I also gave him that
he could just keep at his house. Now, space is
a commodity in London. So he had to train in
his garden. So that would then be dictated by
the weather we have as well. So during the summer
periods, you know, you could get some good training
and during winter became a little bit more difficult.
So during this COVID period, the idea, and you
can see from the paper, there was quite a significant
increase in the tonnage that was done. So the
volume load, so sets, reps, multiplied by the
load. And the reason being. is because it had
been too risky to push the intensity. So if you're
lifting on an MDF board on a patio, which might
not be even, or on grass or ground that might
not be even, you run the risk of injury. During
this time, he also had a couple of injuries that
he was nursing and didn't stop him from training,
but we had to be quite cognizant of that. And
then his schedule around work was also incredibly
dynamic. The goal was then, okay, let's focus
on things like squats and pulls and accessories
to build some general robustness. So if we were
to go to the Olympics, you're in better physical
shape to handle heavier loads when we can start
pushing the intensity again. So that was essentially
why you see this increase in tonnage during the
COVID period. And then of course, as we... go
into the post -covid tonnage drops but intensity
starts creeping up and the volume drops down
as we push to lift heavier weights and start
realizing those adaptations that had occurred
pre -COVID into post -COVID. Okay. And now I
wanted us to talk a little bit about testing
you did and how you used the data throughout
the whole timeline. So I think it's important
to really underscore the fact that because this
is a case study and an N of 1, the associations
made between it's some proxy measure, such as
force. in a jump or force in a an isometric mid
-thigh pull can't directly be associated to a
change in weight lifting performance right so
i i can't say with great confidence that you've
improved two kilos because your net peak force
went up by 200 newtons right that would be irresponsible
of me as a as a sports scientist but i suppose
that's some of the constraints we have when doing
case studies but it can be a little bit more
observational than than anything so if we were
to do this on a group it's a little bit different
because you're making inferences are based on
statistical assumptions and it becomes a little
bit easier to say okay during this in this point
there's a change and we can associate it back
to a change in volume load or strength in a specific
metric so throughout the paper i make a couple
of references to observational references to
why i think certain improvements in performance
had occurred based on the changes in neuromuscular
performance so for example one of the things
i notice is when propulsive impulse of a jump
increased there tended to be a change in the
kilo lifted on the platform often or not net
peak force also showed a similar pattern for
that with the exception of a couple of cases
the things that didn't align for me so much were
decreases in force at 150 milliseconds and 200
milliseconds. Although reflecting back now, they're
probably telling you the same thing. So maybe
I should have done 150. Maybe I should have done
an earlier time point, but then we start going
into variability of metrics, et cetera, which
I think is probably beyond this discussion. So
it was more a case of, okay, that last block
of training we did leading into your taper. What
effect has that had on these proxy measures?
It's positive. Okay. What effect has that had
on how you feel when you're lifting the weight?
And is that weight heavier now? If yes, let's
not deviate from that structure of programming
then. Let's just tweak little bits to see if
we can elicit the same outcome because we're
starting to see that. When this goes up, you
feel and you have lifted a little bit more weight.
So it's observational and it is a little bit
of guesswork. But also when you look at the previous
literature, the association between these metrics
and weightlifting performance itself is moderate
to high, I would say, on the most part. So we
know that improving these physical capacities
will probably have a positive effect on the athlete's
physical preparedness to lift more weight. And
that's excluding anything. think around the psychology
of lifting more weight, the technique of lifting
more weight and other factors that would influence
someone's snatching or king jerking more weight.
I just wanted to mention one thing here. So having
a group of athletes doing the study is great
because you can apply statistics and you can
do group means and you get robustness that way.
Working with elite athlete, you have an advantage
of having this athlete for months or years. So
you can actually do something once. and then
you can repeat it and see whether it elicits
similar outcomes. So although in defense, I guess,
of a case study design, you don't have a group,
but you have a repeated opportunity to use the
good bits again and again and see how it pans
out over the years. Of course, of course. And
I think the counter to that would be in reality,
particularly with a weightlifting athlete, would
you then run the... same program or would you
have to make slight tweaks based on observations
on their technique so maybe now instead of doing
a hang snatch from above the knee you now go
below the knee so that might just be a slight
tweak and that's based on what you're seeing
from a technical perspective so now the program
isn't the same it's slightly different because
you don't have a control for it and i suppose
that's just The dynamic nature of working with
an elite athlete on an individual basis. But
I'm also not chasing someone's propulsive impulse
to be increased. I'm not chasing someone's net
peak force to be increased. I'm chasing bigger
snatch, bigger clean and jerk. And once the athlete
realizes, okay, you're on the same wavelength
as me. I want to snatch more. I want to clean
and jerk more. Of course, that's what I want
you to do. Now let's reverse engineer back. What
are the physical qualities that underpin that?
And now how can we measure that to see if your
physical preparedness is higher so you can snatch
or you have the ability to snatch, clean and
jerk more? Because, and we know that this always
happens, you can have an athlete who trains incredibly
well, comes to competition feeling great, but
they, to their standard, they underperform. You
know, the week prior they hit their PB in the
gym and they're like, I'm definitely going to
PB at the competition. They feel great. You do
their measurements. Everything's up, but actually
they don't PB. They hit what they normally hit.
Let's say they hit 98 % of their best. Like,
does that mean, well, not does that mean, but
more so is it a case of, I suppose it allows
us to then go, actually, look, training did go
really well. Here's the physical measures that
underpin those qualities that you needed to snatch
and clean and jerk more weight. We have the evidence
for that. There's years and years worth of evidence
for that. So the training has gone well. So now
let's continue doing something. similar type
of training and push those values again. But
also let's think about what other factors stopped
you from lifting more weight. Is it technical?
Did something feel off? You know, you can have
these in post performance reviews. Was it the
psychology? Was it the Walmart? So maybe it's
another factor you can lean on and work towards
and focus on to help optimize their performance
because we've got the evidence supporting the
training. And I think having that evidence really
helps the athlete find confidence within themselves.
also within the system that's being used to support
them to snatch and clean each other away. I hope
that answers the question. Yeah. So it gives
you. as a coach, additional data to present to
athletes, but also for you as a coach to know
whether what you are aiming at is possible. I
guess that's whether it was achieved or not,
it's a separate thing to analyze and work through.
But from the capability perspective, it was possible
according to the data you collected. Yeah, from
a physical perspective, absolutely. Okay, so
let's bring it together. What coaches and athletes,
weightlifters should take? from this paper. So
what are your lessons? I hope that the barriers
that we faced are a lot less now. I hope coaches
and athletes don't face these same barriers that
I've discussed earlier. I definitely think there's
more opportunity now, which is good for the sport
more than anything, especially with some of these
refugee athletes lifting some incredible weights.
And we're very fortunate to have one train with
us in our British weightlifting squads. I think
the actual statistical analysis of understanding
meaning. change occurring in your athlete, I
think is a really big takeaway point here because
you're working with one person. So if you want
to know whether there has been a significant
improvement or not, you know, utilize things
like the mean, the standard deviation, you know,
account for that variability and uncertainty
within any sort of testing measures you might
do that are associated to weightlifting. And
we go through that in the method section. And
I also believe you had Professor Anthony Turner
on that that spoke. about, I've touched on these
points about analysing athletes and N equals
one. There's some really great resources out
there by Sands, by Turner, and I think there's
been some by John Harry and Chris Bishop as well
on analysing individual athletes. Because what
that does, it just allows us to have greater
certainty on whether your athlete is actually
getting better or worse. The other takeaway point,
which I almost think should go without saying,
is be adaptable. Put athlete first, whether you're
a sports scientist, streaming conditioning coach.
or the actual weightlifting coach which has probably
a broader role or if you play all of those roles
put the athlete first and prioritize them and
your relationship with them while i could have
easily gotten tied up with the data being you
know quite analytical and objective individual
my role in this was to be a coach first and to
make sure the athlete is comfortable and they
are part of this decision making process of the
programming so maybe come up with negotiables
and negotiables for that athlete's training what
worked what didn't work what does the data say
how does it support some of this and if you can
use that to help tell the story and write future
chapters then i think you're gonna have great
great success with with your athletes because
data is just there to to kind of support what
we do and maybe challenge or well challenge or
support some of our practices and we should evolve
around that thank you do i have time for for
the two questions i finish with uh i suppose
yeah so first question is if you could change
one thing in olympic weightlifting what would
it be if i could change one thing in olympic
weightlifting i don't think it would be a change
i think it would be a nice addition it would
be to make weightlifting more technologically
savvy and viewer friendly so a lot of sports
utilize really nice displays of you know speed
of the boat distance, accuracy in shooting, for
example, and these really lovely visuals. And
I feel like our sport lends itself to that. So
hopefully in the future, we see after a lift,
something like a barbell trajectory or the power
of that individual's lift. And I just think it
engages the viewership more so. I mean, it really
gives an appreciation to how strong and powerful
these athletes actually are. So I think that'll
be one thing I'd like to see. Not so much change,
but added. to weightlifting yes i'm for it okay
last last question where people can find you
if they want to follow your work or ask a question
so i'm available via email so s .chavda at mdx
.ac .uk i'm also on x which is at shy underscore
to tweet i'm also available on instagram coach
underscore chavda and you can find most of our
latest research on our research gate so if you
just search my name on research gate that'll
come up thank you so much it was a pleasure yes
and thank you very much for allowing me to do
the quadruple so i very much appreciate it and
hopefully people are on board of my voice thank
you