Anarchist Athlete

Jason Harding (Founder of Anarchist Athlete). France 2008. Image © www.AnarchistAthlete.com

Anarchist Athlete responds to Red Bull surfing project conducted in Mentawais, Indonesia [...] 

Anarchist Athlete Responds to Red Bull Surfing Project in Mentawais.  Jason Harding questions some of the finer details of the research on the recent Red Bull Surfing Project held in the Mentawais.  Red Bull recently sponsored a surfing project in the Mentawais focussed in part, on providing their elite-level sponsored surfers access to some innovative sport science concepts in a quest to enhance performance.  The trip included professional surfers, Mick Fanning, Jordy Smith, Julian Wilson, Michel Bourez, Christobal De Col, Conner Coffin, Evan Geiselman, Kolohe Andino, Sally Fitzgibbons, Sofia Mulanovich and Tim Boal.  The sport science research component was lead by Andy Walshe and assisted by elite-level surfing coaches Dan Ross and Andy King. 

From what can be gathered from the brief post on www.redbullsurfing.com (posted 12^th June 2009), the project used a number of innovative coaching and sport science techniques in an attempt to enhance the performance of the surfers on board.  As with most performance based sport science projects, the idea was to provide elite-level athletes (Red Bull’s sponsored surfers) with new types of practical and relevant information they can utilise in their quest to succeed at the highest level of professional sport.  Some of these techniques included providing the surfers access to a high quality wave location (in essence the ultimate training venue) in order to refine their already impressive skills.  In particular the team were taken to a wave that breaks with almost mechanical precision, allowing the athletes something that is rarely found in surfing – a relatively unchanging and uniform canvas with which to train on. 

One specific benefit of choosing such a location was that it allowed video footage to be captured and analysed with reference to each wave ridden (as each wave was ultimately very similar).  This location also provides researchers, coaches and athletes the capacity to compare intra-athlete performances (between performances executed by the same surfer) and inter-athlete performances (between performances executed by the different surfers) on waves that are for the most part, identical.  Most sports use some form of video based software to analyse and improve performance however, most sports have a consistent and somewhat static environment with which to conduct these comparisons.  This is the first concerted effort I have read about in surfing that has dealt with the issue that waves rarely break in a uniform manner and thereby often do not provide a consistent background on which to accurately and reliably analyse surfing from the same and different athletes.

In addition, the project used from what I can tell, commercially available GPS equipment to collect and provide information on an athlete’s paddling speed, surfing speed, paddling time and surfing time.  This is now routinely performed in other more mainstream sports but this is one of the first decent attempts to integrate this concept into elite-level surfing I have read about.  The concepts of pre and post surf session warm up and recovery techniques were also trialled and information such as heart rate and blood lactate levels were assessed at specific points during each session (although from the post it is difficult to tell just what time points these readings, in particular blood lactate levels were assessed).  I have only ever read one descriptive research paper focussed on the physiological demands associated with surfing and the study had major flaws within its methodology.  Overall, for the sport of surfing this is a very novel approach to performance analysis and performance enhancement and is one of the first major attempts at doing so that I have come across. 

There are however some major holes in the information provided within the original post and some major gaps in the provision of the finer details of the research.  The post mentions potential publication of the results of this project and if the publication of these results is intended for any sports science journal of significance, the missing information and the finer details of this project will certainly be required. 

I would therefore be extremely be interested in seeing the published (or unpublished) methods and results of the sports science component of this Red Bull surfing project.  In fact I believe I could provide an extensive review of any draft of the publication itself or proposed delivery of methods and results.  I am a qualified sport scientist (B.ExSc Hons, PhD Candidate) and have undertaken similar research projects with elite-level snowboarders over the past five years, including the development of a tech-based concept focused on automated performance assessment for half-pipe snowboarding (something that is closely related to what the Red Bull Research Team have attempted with commercially available GPS equipment).  I actually emailed Red Bull in March 09 with a proposal to do something very similar with surfing but never got any response. 

I have a number of questions and most likely some fairly decent advice for the Red Bull Research Team regarding the use of GPS equipment (and other tech-based concepts) to generate ‘in-field’ performance information, in addition to experience in sport science based performance enhancement techniques focussed specifically on enhancing performance in elite-level surfing, skating and snowboarding.

In general, I loved the overall concept of the project and am very impressed by the level of support the guys were provided from their sponsor Red Bull and also the level of cooperation from elite-level athletes on the trip.  This was probably the best attempt at integrating sport science into elite-level surfing I have read about.   The post on www.redbullsurfing.com was fairly light on the details regarding the sport science component of the trip and so I have compiled some questions that if answered, will fill in almost all gaps in the information already provided.  The Red Bull Research Team may have already dealt with the queries I have listed below but for the most part, they have yet to be explained in any post regarding this trip.  Here are a few of the questions I would pose to the Red Bull research team and some questions that I believe they will be asked (or should be asked) as part of the peer review process if they attempt to publish the results in a sport science or sports performance journal:

QUESTIONS ON THE FINER DETAILS OF THE RED BULL RESEARCH PROJECT

1.  What were the make, model and manufacturer details associated with the GPS equipment?

2.  Where exactly did you attach the GPS unit to the surfers and how? 

3.  How long after a session did it take to upload the information from the GPS unit to a laptop and how long did it take before you could provide feedback to the athletes (i.e. was there any post-processing of data before providing performance information to the athlete)?

4. Has the GPS system you trialled has been set up for collecting surfing specific data or are you just using a commercially available unit and taking the velocity and or speed info straight from the GPS unit and assuming it is accurate for your specific purpose?

5.  Are you aware of the errors inherent in calculating distance, velocity and / or speed from GPS equipment and have these errors been taken into account in your final conclusions? There are some issues with the measurement of distance from GPS signals when assessing over a small distance. 

6.  Have you validated the velocity / speed information you are obtaining with the GPS equipment in a surfing context against a gold standard or criterion method?  If so, what is the error associated with the GPS information such as velocity and speed when used in a surfing environment.      

7.  What sampling rate (Hz) did you use when assessing paddling and surfing velocity / speed?

8.  Have you trialled any other sort of sensor technology to generate the information you are after?

9.  What is your reasoning behind obtaining velocity / speed information in a sports performance context?  How do you intend to use this information to enhance elite-level surfing performance?  Or is this mainly a descriptive project (i.e. The highest velocity obtained by surfers in this project was 42kmh)?

10.    At what time points did you guys sample lactate from the surfers?  Did you take samples before and after each wave, before and after each session, or just during the active recovery period (stationary bike on the boat).

11.  What is the reasoning behind the lactate sampling?  Is this again purely descriptive or do you believe you can enhance some of your dry-land physical training based upon lactate levels witnessed during a real surfing environment?

12.  Why take lactate samples from the finger when the ear lobe has been proven to provide more accurate and reliable readings.  The most common issue here is that wet or sweaty finger tips can dilute the blood sample and therefore give you an underestimation of the actual level of lactate in the blood.

13.  What was the temperature and humidity like in the tropics where you used the ‘Lactate Pro’ (or whatever lactic acid measurement unit you were using)?  There are very strict limits on the environmental conditions where this sort of equipment is accurate and is always a good idea to ensure the unit itself is kept within those limits.  I have done this with cold temperatures in the snow using a constant temperature system I developed with some ‘technicians’ at the Australian Institute of Sport.  The same can be done for when it is too hot or humid.

14. Warm down bikes on a boat in the Mentawai’s.  I reckon it looks pretty stupid on the sidelines of professional football fields let alone on a boat anchored in the tropics.  There is obviously something there (and there are publications backing it up) but just how effective it is, I believe is still very debatable.  There are other methods of active recovery and ‘in-between heat’ warm down techniques that can generate the similar results without resorting to dragging one of those things around WQS and WCT events and on boat trips in the tropics. 

15.  Regarding my last point:  There is a very real but largely unpublished affect of an athlete’s perception of style on mental state and performance in elite-level competition, especially in sports like surfing, skateboarding and snowboarding.  I have found that a number of seemingly minor things (things that most people, including sponsors, neglect) can affect an athlete’s competitive focus.  One very simple example is how they feel about the gear they are wearing and the type of team support they have surrounding them.  Imagine being the only WCT surfer carrying a stationary warm down bike around the globe during the WCT and to his or her photo trips.  Reckon he or she would cop a fair bit of shit from fellow competitors and peers.  Reckon an athlete’s personal perception of their current style and overall image has no effect on performance in the public arena?  Think again.  There is a large sociological effect and practice community perception of sport science projects and techniques on youth orientated extreme sports and to ignore it is to make a mistake.

16.  I could ask if you had ethical approval for your project and how you ensure anonymity of your subjects but that would be lame and typical of academic and government institutional red tape.  Most journals however will ask for the ethics approval number to be inserted somewhere in the methods section of the paper.  Instead I will ask you guys this.  From data collection to submission of a publication (depending on how large and complex the data collection and analysis is) should take about three months (in terms of journal publication).  Journal publication can take any where up to a year but with cool projects and connections with industry based magazines and journals comes the ‘oh-so good’ fast tracking of publication.  So when do you think your research results will become available?  Additionally, where do you think you will try to publish your results (a surfing magazine, sports science journal, on the wrapping around Red Bull cans, Penthouse)?

Just thinking out loud here as this is the sort of work I have been doing for the past five years or so.  I like the overall idea behind the project you guys have pulled off and I am very impressed by the support provided by your sponsor Red Bull.  I am however very passionate about providing results to athletes that are accurate, reliable, and repeatable and have practical relevance to performance enhancement.  I would be pretty keen to strike up a discussion regarding your surfing project and my thoughts on the subject.

Jason Harding.

Website: www.AnarchistAthlete.com

Phone:    +61419 750 116   

Email: AnarchistAthlete@gmail.com

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