Training & Competition

Author Biography:

Name: Eugene Amo-Dadzie

Age: 30

Event: 100m

Performance Level: International Level

Contribution topic area: Mindset

Who Am I?

I am a Christian, qualified chartered accountant, husband, and father to the most beautiful girl in the world. I made the decision to take up the sport at the age of 26 after a good friend of mine asked me why I had never considered pursuing a sport I have always been very passionate about. I guess the rest is history as here I am 4 seasons later wiser, more re…

Track and field is tough.

Grinding it out almost every single day, through bitter, cold winter nights, all to try and make the smallest improvements that could be the difference between representing your country or not in major Championships. The one saving grace is that our sport is based on facts; who can run the fastest time, jump the highest, throw the furthest, so in theory if your performance is better than your rivals, the selection is guaranteed, right? Well, apparently not.

My career has …

‘Records are made to be broken’

Could this increasing pressure be driving athletes away from the sport and subsequently, due to rising standards could more athletes be developing injuries as a result?

‘But that’s part and parcel of being an athlete…’

For athletes in Olympic and Paralympic Sports, high calibre performance represents the pinnacle of what they hope to achieve (Henrickson et al, 2017). Granted, pressure is a very open term, whilst many athletes will experience worries and stress at som…

Credit Image: FatCamera/Getty Images

Rest-day fuelling has become somewhat of a taboo for many athletes out there. Being bombarded with science of what you should and shouldn’t do, cutting on carbs, forgetting the fats and worrying about protein in case you lose all your gains – we’ve all been there.

It is important to stress that how we eat on a rest day can actually impact the upcoming sessions, strength and endurance. Whilst exercise and training are essential for performance, rest is just as, …

📸 via Team GB

Right, let's get straight into this one. So how did I get into running? Well for me it all started way back when I was little and in school. I was into a lot of sports, like basketball, football and running, but in that order. I watched the NBA a lot and played in my school team, I also played football for my local club and tried to see how far I could get with the skills that I thought I had. As much as I liked running I never did anything about it. I didn't watch any running at al…

Drake and Michelle Obama speaking about an athlete? Must be Bolt... you know the GOAT 9x Olympic Champ. No… They, along with the rest of the internet, speak about Sha’Carri Richardson, a 21-year-old who hasn’t even been to the Olympics yet.

Why Sha’Carri? In case you’ve been living under a rock, black culture, and to be even more specific, African American lead culture and trends are the most influential in the world. Whether it be music of any genre but especially hip hop, fashion, or …

Kevin Metzger may only have been specialising in the 400m for little over a year, but a string of outstanding performances in the one-lap event has earned him the chance to represent Great Britain at international level for the first time in his career.

He makes his GB début in Poland at the World Relay Championships this weekend as one of the less experienced members of the men’s squad, having raced in the outdoor 400m less than a dozen times in his entire career – a fraction of the ex…

Ah, December. It's cold, it's dark and training is getting harder. Whatever sport you do, December tends to represent the middle of winter training and probably a lot of time spent at the training ground. With 7 events to fit in, Heptathletes have learned a thing or two about long training days. With that in mind, here's some top multi-eventer tips for surviving those double (or triple!) session days.

📸 by Jodi Hanagan

The Nike Air Zoom Viperfly aren’t the first super spikes to be shelved. Back in 1968, the Puma Brush spikes were also banned before the Olympic Games. The only difference being they were released first, 2 world records were broken competing in these spikes. Most notably John Carlos broke the 20 second barrier for the first time in the 200 metres a month before the games on a new tartan surface. 

Years later, Tommie Smith wrote in his book, Silent Gesture: “Carlos couldn’t have be…

📸 by Naomi Ogbeta

In some ways, being a semi-professional athlete is a thankless job. You train just as hard as those at the top do, but the rewards aren’t reaped until you make that critical breakthrough to the “elite” level. This is not a complaint about our lot, but rather an observation of fact. We are often told to stay motivated by keeping in mind our goals and focusing on the end result. However, especially due to the times we are in, these can seem rather remote. I think that’s why it is …