U of M goes to the Olympics
Assistant coach Adrian Honish to work on technical team
Tessa Vanderhart Staff
Adrian Honish is headed for Torino — but don’t expect the assistant coach of the women’s volleyball team to return with any medals.
Along with U of M graduate student Carolyn Taylor, Honish will be working as a VTR performance technology officer, conducting biomechanical analysis for the competitors at the winter Olympics.
He will be responsible for taking video of Olympic athletes and providing it to coaches in preparation for later events — quite similar to the analysis he does at the Health, Leisure and Human Performance Research Institute here at the U of M.
“It’s taking physics and applying it to sport, and it’s seeing where can we make improvements. Where can we make changes? What can you do differently to become closer to where that athlete is?” Honish said.
“It’s basically a process of getting athletes to excel, technically, in their sport.”
Also the assistant coach of the Bison women’s volleyball team, Honish explained that the technology can be used for virtually any sport. The usefulness of the analysis lies in comparing the athlete to another who excels in the technical aspects of nearly any sport.
And Honish can attest to the universality of the technology: he and labmate Dana Way have a “library” of themselves doing every sport, from tennis to the Arctic winter games high kick.
“We do what we can,” said Honish.
The technology has been used in great detail with athletes as young as 15, but Honish is most proud of some of the centre’s high profile successes — including work with Colin Matheson, one of the top wheelchair sprinters in Canada.
“I’d like to believe that every single time it helps. The thing with biomechanics is that we can do the analysis, and we can tell people what to do, but it still comes down to . . . applying that knowledge and applying those skills, every single day,” said Honish. “We suggest the improvements, but they make them themselves.”
Two of the other Manitobans going to the Olympics — Shannon Rempel and Brittany Shusler, both speed skaters — were on teams coached by Honish in their earlier years.
“So I’m actually kind of excited to run into them at the Olympics,” he laughed.
Athlete analysis requires little by way of camera technology — but the sport analysis software is really the key to biomechanical analysis.
Dartfish, a software program first used extensively at the 1998 Olympics, is widely used because of its “coach-friendly” features. Having invested in the software three years ago, the university is now home to the most renowned Dartfish lab in Canada, according to Honish.
“I hope that one day Winnipeg will be the centre of biomechanics and sport science in the country . . . I hope Manitoba is the future of sport science,” he said.
And Honish’s technique to make it so is flawless. He was recently hired as the biomechanist for the national men’s volleyball team, and plans to open his own biomechanics clinic with Way.
“I’ve just always loved sport — since playing a ridiculous amount of sports in high school, and coming to university and coaching for the last 10 years. Basically, just everything I’ve done, eating and sleeping and my waking hours, has just been sport this and sport that.”
Honish translated his love for sport into 10 years of coaching experience, during which time he spent five years in the faculty of physical education before moving on to the newly developed sports science program, where he trained in biomechanics for his graduate work.
Honish said that he finds his work with athletes to be the perfect way to reconcile his love of sports with a need to retire “my old, beaten up body.”
“It’s so huge: you know that you’re hoping athletes improve and helping your country do better. I like the thought of helping them improve.”
