Since 24th of March, former badminton player & coach U. Vimal Kumar has not visited the Prakash Padukone Badminton Academy (PPBA) due to the COVID-19 enforced lockdown. He lives with his father in an apartment near the academy and his father is also a coach at PPBA.
Kumar has been taking online teaching classes for his players and trying to encourage them to practice and train themselves at home for more than 40 days now. As a nationwide selector, he is also working with India’s top players in the same way.
With the central officials easing a number of restrictions within the third part of the lockdown, Vimal believes that elite athletes should immediately reunite to get the coaching right.
“If they just sit idle at home, a lot of muscle wastage happens,” Kumar said. “My request is that professional sports should not be clubbed with general sports like in schools, summer camps, and community sports, etc. Professional sport is different,” he added.
Many international venues have produced return-to-training pointers for elite athletes, and Kumar thinks the Australian Institute of Sport’s design could turn into an effigy for different countries.
“They need to make some provisions and permit at the least the elite group to renew their coaching protecting in thoughts the social distancing norms and pointers,” he mentioned. “MHA (Ministry of Dwelling Affairs) ought to determine the coaching facilities the place an elite group of sportsperson can prepare after which delegate the authority to respective state associations to watch the rules and athletes.” he further said.
It has been over 5 weeks since the restrictions have forced athletes to stay at residence and are ready to go without gear – these include Olympians in sports activities authorities across India who are allowed to use in India not allowed any of the services.
For someone who should not be on social media, Kumar created an account on Twitter last week to address his concerns, from sports activities minister Kiren Rijiju to find techniques to open coaching for elite athletes, he requested.
“Sure sports activities are very, very bodily like swimming, badminton, boxing, wrestling, athletics, and so forth. They want loads of bodily conditioning,” he mentioned. “In China, the place it began, the nationwide coaching facilities are open. They’ve quarantined themselves and are coaching. These are high-end athletes and if they don’t seem to be doing energy coaching applications past two-three weeks the degrees will come down.” he said.
He feels on-line teaching and motivational talks can solely assist to a sure level.
