InSync, VMFA collaborate for high-performance camp

A collaborative effort between InSync Therapeutics and the Vurlon Mills Football Academy (VMFA), some 20 pre- and early-teen footballers over the past three weeks had the opportunity of undergoing an intensive high-performance camp focused on assessing their skills, gauging them against worldwide standards and improving those skills over time.
Physiotherapist attached to InSync Therapeutics, Angelica Holder, gave an overview on the high-performance camp and the tests being carried out.
Holder explained, “Here we set out to do a speed camp which we aimed to develop the speed of the young athletes. We had 20 participants, and that is a mixture of both male and female athletes. What we aim to do is have strength testing in which we would have mimicked protocols that are established worldwide for football-specific drills. So, we included strength testing and speed and agility testing.”

Aside from testing, according to Holder, the camp was also focused on instilling best practices and principles in the young athletes.
“In these three weeks, we would’ve established good high-performance practices; we’ve introduced that to our young athletes here. We trained them 4 days within the week, two days on, one day off, and what we’ve planned to do is test initially and then retest. We also aimed, within these three weeks, to look at consistency: how often any of these particular athletes could’ve executed their skills over the three weeks, consistently,” she divulged.
In addition, Holder revealed that the athletes benefitted from tutelage on warm-ups, warm-downs, hydration and nutrition practices, and the importance of recovery over the course of the camp.
Quizzed on why this particular age group is being targeted, Holder described it as the perfect age to establish good principles.
The physiotherapist enlightened, “This specific age group is what we would consider grass roots; most of the athletes here range from ages 13 to 8, so really and truly this is the foundation of where football training really begins. It’s perfect for us to be here because what we can do is establish good training practices, principles and patterns which the athletes can now take from this level and continue throughout.”

“So, they’re not starting at age 20, at the senior level, where they’re now learning how to stretch properly or why we need to stretch or why we need to drink electrolytes to hydrate. So, we’re starting them on professional and high-performance setups.”
The physiotherapist, who has worked with several national teams throughout her career, further broke down their data-driven methods that assist in identifying improvements.
“I love that question,” Holder cheekily responded to the inquiry, “because what we’ve actually done is put data into the speed camp. So, it’s not just me saying, ‘Hey, I think the athletes look like they’re stronger’, and that ‘they’re moving faster’, or ‘they’re even kicking faster’ – with the testing that we did before, at the end of the camp, what we aim to do is a retest. That actually would give us objective data on how the athletes actually performed better. So, this is basically taking the science back into sport; how performance looks after three weeks of training.”
Though starting with football, InSync Therapeutics is hoping to carry out similar camps with other sport disciplines in the future.
InSync Therapeutics provides a range of services from physical rehabilitation to personalised exercise training, massage and mobility therapy, recovery room access, exercise testing, and team/event coverage. Located at Providence, East Bank Demerara (EBD), they can also be contacted at https://insynctherapeutics.gy/, [email protected] and via telephone at 731-8442.