Skip to main content

EIS round up 15/03/19: Paralympic Conference, #More2Me and female athlete health coverage

Lucy Lomax | 15 March 2019

The past couple of weeks have been an extremely busy time for EIS staff and practitioners which has seen their expertise on show at the Paralympic Conference, the launch of the #More2Me campaign and EIS research around female athlete health featured in the Daily Telegraph for International Women’s Day. Read on for a round-up of all the action.

The UK Paralympic Performance Conference, hosted in collaboration between the EIS, UK Sport, and the British Paralympic Association took place on Tuesday 12th and Wednesday 13th March in Manchester.

Over 50% of the workshops and talks were hosted by EIS employees, covering topics ranging from heat preparation, jet lag, and athlete mental health.

 

 

On the first day of the conference, members of the EIS physiology team, Ellie Procter, Chloe Caygill, Esme Matthew, Ben Stevenson and Luke Gupta ran a session called the ‘Tokyo Zone’ highlighting the para-specific challenges of competing in the Tokyo climate in 2020.

EIS sleep expert Luke Gupta also ran a workshop with EIS Sport Science Technician Ben Brown on ‘Travelling East: Practical considerations for managing and enhancing body-clock adjustment’ with Physiologist Ben Stevenson speaking in the workshop on ‘Beating the Tokyo heat – practical solutions for athletes and staff’.

On the second day of the conference, Paralympic Performance Scientist Henry Shiplee supported EIS Head of Performance Lifestyle Jo Harrison with a session on transitions in and through elite disability sport.

The session was also supported by EIS Performance Lifestyle advisors Ben Quilter and Helen Galashan.  During the session, elite para athletes who had already transitioned formed a panel and were asked questions by the audience around the topic. In this session, research funded by the EIS Pathways team on the transition into sport was also presented by Anthony Papathomas from Loughborough University.

Over the past few weeks, Performance Scientist Amy Warburton travelled to Norway and Manchester on respective camps with British Skeleton and British Cycling alongside the next generation of Olympic hopefuls who had been selected on the confirmation programmes of the Discover Your Gold Talent ID campaign launched last April.

On Tuesday 26thFebruary, the #More2Me campaign, led by the EIS Performance Lifestyle team was launched around encouraging athletes to think about life after sport whilst they are still training and competing and employ a healthy life : sport balance.

Head of Performance Lifestyle Jo Harrison gave an important message to elite athletes around the campaign which was supported by past and present elite athletes; Lizzy Yarnold, Kristian Thomas, Nekoda Smythe-Davis and Paralympian Hannah Cockroft.

On International Women’s Day, research carried out by the EIS was featured in the Telegraph along with an interview with EIS Co-Head of Physiology Emma Ross.

In the article, Emma spoke about the need to open up the conversation around female athlete health and performance in elite sport including topics such as stress incontinence, menstrual cycle symptoms and breast health and support. The EIS also featured this on their own digital channels for International Women’s Day including interviews with Emma Ross and fellow EIS Physiologist Rich Burden around the work the EIS is doing in this area with the SmartHER campaign.

Also on International Women’s Day, EIS Head of Psychology Kate Hays did a talk at Hull University around her journey from the Bejing 2008 Olympics looking ahead to Tokyo 2020.

Related Articles