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Journalism of Courage
For Indian athletes, world-class training is at reach now, thanks to the advanced Sports Science Centre at Balewadi
A co-existence between human body and technology does not necessarily mean robots. Science and technological advancements have long been used to enhance the performance of sports persons. A perfect example of how technology can assist, enhance and better the performance of the athletes is the newly set-up Sports Science Centre SSC at the Commonwealth youth Games 2008 venue.
After the screening, the most important aspect is training and the centre ensures that the candidates are trained for becoming the best. An important and state of the art section of the centre is the Low Oxygen chamber, a glass room that trains the athletes at the atmospheric conditions present at altitudes as high as 6000 meters. According to Dr Bhamare, 8220;High altitude training is a must for training the sportpersons. The reason being that at such high altitudes, the pressure drops and Oxygen level is low. When the athletes get used to performing in these adverse conditions, their performance in normal conditions is much better. Also, The government of India spends over Rs 25 lakh on training the athletes at high altitudes, this amount will now be saved because we will be training the athletes for Commonwealth games as well as Olympics in this centre.8221;
What adds excitement to the centre is the ice bath area. Dr Anand Gangwal says, 8220;The research is still on as far as the effectiveness of the ice bath is concerned. This is useful when a fast recovery and immediate results are needed. When a player is tired and needs to perform immediately, an ice bath is advised.8221; One of the most recent developments that is a part of SSC is EMG, meaning 8211; Electro-myography. Similar to ECG, the EMG calculates the forces exerted by the muscles while performing. In Dr Bhamare8217;s words, 8220;This gives us information about which muscles are involved in a particular action. It also lets us know if any of the muscles are reacting slowly. The right word that describes the phenomenon is muscle firing and this is what the machine helps us know.8221;
SSC, which is currently a part of the medical facility, will be operational after the games. The authorities are also planning to introduce a number of facilities like Sports physiology, nutrition, sports physiotherapy, sports psychology and so on. Well, if gold medals are the targets for the Olympics to come we can surely say, that we are well equipped for that!
PT Usha visits SSC
Sports icon PT Usha visited the Sports Science Centre SSC today. She was suffering from tennis elbow injury. Appreciating the centre, she said, 8220;This is a world class place. I have visited many other centres like this but I feel that this is the most technologically advanced one. We are planning to come up with one such center in South India as well to help our players perform better.8221; The athlete who recently suffered from tennis elbow said, 8220;The event has come as a great opportunity for the athletes to practice for Olympics. And if we utilise it to thebest we will definitely prepare our players better for the Olympics.8221;
