Coaches urged to embrace sports medicine

FREDERICK KEBADIRETSE
Staff Writer | Friday February 12, 2010 00:00

A sports medicine professor at the University of Botswana (UB) Professor Ignatius Onyewadume said this when he addressed coaches at the BFA’s Lekidi Centre in Gaborone this week.

He said sports medicine is a crucial aspect of modern soccer and coaches when designing fitness programmes for their clubs should not overlook it. Prof Onyewadume also emphasised the importance of players’ nutrition, saying it is very crucial for their performance and physique.

He said Southern African players naturally possess smaller bodies as compared to their North and West African counterparts and as such they always struggle to contain rivals from the two regions when they compete against them. He said even though the body structure is determined by genes, proper nutrition can be used to ensure players get physically well developed.

As a result, he urged team managers to make sure their players have access to good nutrition, even if it means devoting a fraction of players’ wages to nutrition.

The former Township Rollers’ mentor, who is also a physical trainer for the log leaders, said his experience with Botswana players showed him that they lacked much physically, which could limit a player’s performance even if he were naturally talented.

Onyewadume added that nutrition and other aspects of sports medicine like psychology should form part of every footballer’s programme from an early age for proper development.

He also advised the coaches to acquire information on the scientific basis of coaching because soccer has changed so much in recent times that “it is very important for them to have this information if they want to produce good results and compete with the best”.