Optimising athlete recovery and managing load effectively across multiple sports with Carmen Colomer

This week's Pacey Performance Podcast sees Rob speaking to Head of Performance at Perth Glory in the A-League, Carmen Colomer. Since 2017, Carmen has had quite the journey going from the Australian Institute of Sport to the Brumbies, Brisbane Broncos, Philadelphia 76'ers as Director of Sports Science and then into her current role in Perth.

With all those experiences across multiple sports and countries, we wanted to chat to Carmen about what she has learnt along the way, particularly when it comes to recovery. The NBA has a notoriously gruelling schedule, so how did Carmen implement fresh ideas to the organisation and what has she took from that experience and integrated into the programme at Perth? 

The first half of the conversation is all about recovery, what has worked for Carmen and her athletes and what hasn't. Then the second half is all about load monitoring. This is certainly a passion of hers but she early in the conversation gives us the cold hard facts of what load monitoring is and isn't. 

If you're interested in hearing from Carmen, click play now.

Main talking points -

• Challenges of working in a male dominated industry
• Recovery periodisation
   
• Recovery methods to use during heavy fixture periods
   
• What recovery methods have come and gone in your recovery battery in the last few years?
   
• How do you monitor the effects of a recovery intervention?
   
• Taking learnings from one sport to another
   
• Athlete monitoring - what it is and isn't
   
• External load monitoring and deciding what metrics matter across different sports
   
• Where is this area going? Is it a matter of more information from these technologies or using what we have better?
   
• How to maximise subjective monitoring?
   
• Getting buy-in from athletes and coaches to subjectives
   
• Taking learnings from one sport to another