World-renowned sports physiologist Martin Buchheit is lending his expertise at Adelaide this week.

Originally from France, Buchheit heads up the Football (Soccer) Performance and Science Department at ASPIRE, Academy for Sports Excellence, in Doha, Qatar.  He’s authored more than 105 peer-review articles, including one regarded as the “the Bible” on physiology and strength and conditioning, and has been invited to speak at conferences around the world.

Buchheit is currently linked with Edith Cowan University in Perth, where he is an adjunct professor. He’s previously also spent time at Carlton.

Crows physical performance manager Nick Poulos worked with Buchheit at ASPIRE, and organised his former colleague’s five-day visit to West Lakes. Poulos said he was thrilled to have someone of Buchheit’s calibre cast his eye over Adelaide’s pre-season program.

“Martin is No.1 in the world in team sport physiology,” Poulos said.

“He’s written the two most recent reviews on high-intensity running. His peer-review journal (“High Intensity Interval Running, a Solution to the Puzzle”) is like a ‘Bible’ now for anyone involved in physiology or strength and conditioning.

“Martin’s advising us and assisting us. We’re using the relationship to help the personal development of our physical performance team.

“Any other club around the League would probably be rapt to spend half-an-hour with Martin, and we’ve got him for a week. We’re very lucky.”

Buchheit will work closely with Poulos and his team to help refine the Club’s statistical analysis.

Improvements in this area can help aid injury prevention and ensure the players are getting the most out of every training session, both in-season and over the summer months. He’ll also spend time with high performance manager Paddy Steinfort.

“In particular, Martin will help us to refine and improve our statistical analysis, including all our GPS monitoring, physio screening, neuromuscular screening, wellness and blood markers. We’re interpreting it reasonably well at the moment, but we want to be better than anyone else. Martin’s an expert in this area, so we’re going to pick his brain,” Poulos said.

“We want to make our analysis more efficient, so we can make better decisions on individual player management. Martin will also providing evidence-based research and recommendations on the use of environmental stimulus to enhance performance, in particular the research he has undertaken on heat and altitude in Doha, and the recent international team sport conference on the use of altitude training.

“As well as that, he’ll help me with some of the planning and periodisation from a physiological perspective. He’ll give us advice on each individual drill that we do in terms of the loading involved.

“It’ll be great to get Martin’s insight and advice.”