California Lutheran University hosted an athletic symposium on May 1, covering athletic training and sports science topics for students, athletes, coaches and trainers.
The free symposium entitled, “Sport Science Symposium: From Lab to Weight Room to the Field,” was the first of its kind in Cal Lutheran history. The event was the work of exercise science professor Hugh Lamont.
“The main goal was to highlight, one, that sport science is an important science, and two, that it’s highly valuable as a resource to help coaches in the sense that they could prove their own knowledge with how we adapt to physical exercise and get stronger and get more powerful,” Lamont said. “The research in this area could help them make better informed decisions about how they structure practice, for instance.”
Three professors from three universities around the country lent their expertise to the program. Michael Stone, director of the Sport Science Laboratory and Sport Physiology and Performance Doctoral Program at East Tennessee State University, lectured via Skype on “Power Development in Sports.” Lee Brown, director of the Human Performance Laboratory and the Center for Sport Performance at California State University, Fullerton, spoke on “Post-Activation Potentiation for Performance.” Lastly, Howard Gray, sport science director for Texas A&M University football gave a lecture entitled “Sport Science: Making a Difference in the Real World,” according to clusports.com.
Stone’s lecture, the first of the day discussed the importance of power development, “arguably the most important thing in terms of developing for strength power sports,” and included new advancements and research.
“Maybe it might spur some students to go on and pick this for a career or do research,” Stone said in an email interview.
Benjamin Dominguez, an exercise science major attended the symposium because it directly related to his career aspirations of being a sports researcher and professor at the higher education level.
“I thought today’s symposium would be a wonderful way to learn how to translate what we learn in the laboratory into real life. The speakers are incredibly [knowledgeable] and they’re from incredible backgrounds,” Dominguez said.
Lamont said it is beneficial for students, especially exercise science students to hear from professionals outside of the Cal Lutheran campus because it helps them gain perspective on the impact this field has on the future of athletics.
“To see somebody other than me talk about it, I think is helpful. To see that there’s other people out there, not just me who talk about these things. Some of those are my mentors,” Lamont said. “Mike Stone, who was the first presenter, I was his student and then 10 years later I worked with him, so he’s had a profound impact on me in terms of my development. It’s nice for them to see some of where my thinking comes from as well.”
Dominguez said it’s nice to hear what students are learning in the classroom and relate to future careers in sports training.
“We learn a lot about the lab aspect of how these things work, but this is more focused on taking that and applying it to actual sports,” Dominguez said.
Stone said there should be more symposiums of this sort at the college level in secondary education institutions across the country.
“I mean, strength and conditioning, and particularly sports science, is one of the fastest-growing areas of study in the States. It’s one of the biggest areas of interest in the United States. It’s extremely important in producing athletes. You’ve got to know something about it,” Stone said.
Lamont said he hopes this symposium will turn into an annual event, especially since “there are so many topics that could be covered and we barely scratched the surface today.”
“I wish everyone had a chance to get this wonderful opportunity,” Dominguez said. “This is really a once in a lifetime opportunity.”
Kaatrina Petty
Staff Writer
Published May 6th, 2015