03 Mar 2020

To attain positive results in international competitions, Botswana needs to explore sports science pluses such as the use of the recovery set for elite athletes.

In an interview recently, Botswana Athletics Association (BAA) vice president, Oabona Theetso said it was important for athletes to recover quickly after training and during competitions, hence the need to introduce recovery sets.

“Sports science has grown, so we cannot as a country see all the technology for recovery elsewhere. Other countries have ice-baths, pool sessions and recovery sets. Let’s agree that sport has grown and as a country we must also be seen growing in embracing sport science,” he said.

Furthermore, Theetso said they had observed that some of their athletes did well in the heats and semi-finals, but performed badly in the finals because they had not fully recovered.

Different scholars have written about the importance of recovery for elite athletes. Research has also highlighted the rapid reboot as a high quality, affordable recovery technology designed to help athletes reduce the time it took their muscles to recover from exertion so they could quickly return to training and competions.

In an interview with South African recovery club director, Grahaman Hatch said the recovery set was a pneumatic compression system used by international athletes.

He said 90 per cent of professional teams and athletes in America used the pneumatic compression system, which uses air pressure to massage the legs.

Hatch said the pneumatic set followed a specific sequence as it started from the bottom and worked its way up the legs, adding that it also used special pattern to technology.

“So it compresses and relaxes, and such increases the circulation to the muscles. It also removes all the metabolite after training and then pushes and increases blood flow into the muscle to help put more nutrients back into the muscles,” he said.

He said it was beneficial to athletes, adding that it also ensured that the next training or competition would be a quality one.

Furthermore, Hatch said in South Africa it was also used by rugby teams like the Lions and Sharks as well as NTT Pro Cycling.

“The American Olympic team in 2016 had 200 of these units. In South Africa I know Wayde van Niekerk, Akani Simbine, and Clearence Munyai are some of the athletes using the recovery equipment. ENDs