It’s a long road to Rio.
Athletes often spend years training for the opportunity to compete at the Olympic Games. It’s all about ensuring they are fit, focused and ready when it comes time to perform.
That’s why having people like Lori Dithurbide around for support before, during and after the Games can make all the difference in an athlete’s quest for the gold.
Dr. Dithurbide, a Dalhousie Kinesiology professor in the School of Health and Human Performance, is a mental performance consultant with the Canadian women’s artistic gymnastics team for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
She is one of more than 200 specialists and coaches working behind the scenes this year to support Canada’s 314 Olympic competitors.
"It's not that different than a strength and conditioning coach,” Dr. Dithurbide says of her role. “I help the athletes increase their mental skills to maximize training and improve consistency in performance.”
Maximizing potential
Dr. Dithurbide has worked closely with the gymnasts over the past several weeks — including Nova Scotia’s own Ellie Black, who’s taken Kinesiology courses at Dal — in the lead up to this summer’s Games. Now, she’s joined the gymnastics team in Rio, helping its athletes cope with the pressure and stay focused on their performance.
“I’ll be there to help manage distractions, to remind them of all the stuff that we’ve worked on, and to debrief after performances,” she says.
Dr. Dithurbide has been training with athletes ahead of major competitions for several years as a consultant at Canadian Sports Centre Atlantic (CSCA), a regional sports service provider. But this is her first time going to the Olympics, an event that brings heightened expectations, media attention and other distractions.
“The biggest mental challenge is dealing with the distractions that are the Olympic Games, the largest sporting even in the world" says Dr. Dithurbide, noting that studies have shown the impact mental distractions can have on athletic performance during the Olympics.
Dr. Dithurbide will be working alongside coaches, a physiotherapist and other experts as part of a broader support team, the composition of which varies from sport to sport depending on allocations decided on by the Canadian Olympics Committee.
Analysis and performance
Some teams bring along performance analysts such as Leo Thornley, a Dal Kinesiology alum (MSc ’02, Kinesiology) who is accompanying the Canadian canoe and kayak team to Rio this summer.
Thornley, who is director of sport science at CSCA, worked with the team in London four years ago and has spent the years since looking closely at what metrics matter most when it comes to getting the best performance out of the athletes.
His job involves tracking a variety of metrics — including everything from top speeds on the water and acceleration rates during racing to environmental conditions and how the athletes are feeling before a performance — all with the aim of helping coaches make good decisions for the athletes.
By compiling detailed information over the course of many years (“not just at the Olympics”), Thornley has gotten to know the individual patterns for the different athletes and what they might need to improve upon. For instance, how much strength does a particular athlete need to add in order to improve their acceleration rate?
“Everything that we measure has to be connected to performance in some fashion,” he says. “Then when you actually have the performance, we can understand why that performance occurred.”
All that detailed work paid off four years ago when the team took home three medals, an achievement he says has kept him motivated heading into Rio.
“These athletes put in an incredible amount of effort on a daily basis and we see it on a daily basis,” he says. “To see that return in the performances when you get to the end of the four years is pretty cool.”
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