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Competitive diving is one of the most
beautiful Olympic sports.
It requires strength, ability, and above all, courage.
Up here on a 10-metre board, it takes just a second and a
half before you hit the water at about 30 miles an hour.
And in that second and a half, the athlete has got to do
complex somersaults, twists, got to understand the heights,
and got to understand the angle of entry.
So how does the diver do that?
And that's where the coach comes in.
So before the diver surfaces from the water, the coach has
got to come up with the answer to the question what do I tell
my athletes?
Okay you stopped it well, good rip, it's a little bit quick.
You should try diving.
I give them feedback that helps them
achieve their goals.
And that's the goals for that session, the goals for that
training cycle, and ultimately, the goals that
will get them towards elite performance and hopefully an
Olympic medal.
So, Adam, we've worked together for a
number of years now.
We've installed six cameras, four force platforms, two
enormous TV screens.
How do you use those to help your athletes?
Well, we use it to gives lots and lots and lots of feedback.
And of the different kinds of feedback we get, we can choose
which ones of those the athletes respond best to and
make sure they get more information in that style.
In the first instance, you've got your coach's eye.
You're looking at them and saying, internally, that looks
right or that doesn't look right.
This is why.
And then the iPad and the video and the force data gives
you a bit more information that says yes, I was right
with what I thought.
Or actually, this is new information, so I'm going to
turn that into a postural correction or a timing
correction that's hopefully easy for the diver to make
happen to get them closer to my coach's eye and my data
idea of perfect.
By the time they've come up from the water, you've got all
of that ready.
You tap your tablet, as they hit the water.
That goes and grabs the last few seconds of video data.
And by the time the diver comes around, they can have
seen their replay on the big screen.
And then we go into a little bit of detail with them in a
way that works for them and leads to a technical change
that makes them a little bit better.
I think it was more my legs did that.
They did exactly the right thing.
It just needs a little bit of zip.
So it takes that out.
So we've got the video of Ben.
This is the high-speed video link to the force plate data
and we can play the video through.
Oh, wow.
I love that
You can see the line projected on-screen.
And if the line's longer, he's pushing harder.
And depending on what direction the line goes,
that's the direction he's pushing into the tower.
So here, for example, you see he's pushing back quite hard.
Now the graph, up here, tells the coach and the diver if
they want it, a, how hard in terms of Newtons they were
pushing on the tower in two different directions.
So the green line shows how hard he was pushing down onto
the tower, the red line shows the x-direction--
how hard he was pushing forwards or backwards.
OK, let me just give that a go .
That is fantastic.
I love that.
So having that, and having on it here, by the side of the
pool, being able to do that-- that is just wonderful seeing
those force vectors.
So what the top athlete has is instinct and judgement .
But he needs more.
At the elite level, you need evidence-based understanding
to get those incremental changes.
And it's the job of the sports engineer to take the
measurements, to understand it, and to impart it back to
the athlete and coach, so they can be the very
best that they can.
I love it.
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