Flash forward to the end of July 2017, when Adeagbo saw an Instagram post announcing tryouts for the Nigerian Bobsled and Skeleton Federation in Houston, Texas. 'I thought, 'You know what? I'll never know if I don't go,'' she says. So, two weeks before the tryouts, she determined that she was in decent enough shape to go without injuring herself. She boarded a 22-hour flight from Johannesburg and arrived in Houston the morning of tryouts, tried out that evening and then flew back to South Africa the next day.
A couple weeks later she got the call she didn't necessarily expect but hoped for: The federation wanted to invite her to come to a camp in Canada to see if she could live up to the potential she showed at tryouts.
See, Adeagbo did so well at those tryouts because she was being tested on everything she already mastered back in her track and field days: speed (with a 45-meter sprint), power (through a shot-put throw) and explosiveness (via a standing long jump). At tryouts, there wasn't a sled - let alone a sliver of ice - within sight. But at camp, she'd have to use her 143-pound frame to power the push start of a 62-pound skeleton sled down a frozen track.
'I honestly didn't know much about the sport, but knew that there was a lot that I could draw from my track and field background to help me succeed in it,' she says. Though the similarities between the two sports may not seem obvious - one is jumping into sand, the other is sliding down an ice track on a sled - they are plentiful. Both sports require speed, explosiveness and power. 'In each, you run as fast as you can for about 30 meters to gain momentum before you launch into or onto something,' Adeagbo explains. 'I was able to pick up the push start very, very quickly because I already had that experience with the runway of triple jump.'
The most challenging part of a run for Adeagbo is not losing all the momentum she's built up in the push start. 'Where I really have the advantage is only for a very short amount of time, four or five seconds of the race,' she says. 'But the track is a mile long, so the race will last another 50 seconds.'
To keep her edge, Adeagbo spends a lot of time in the gym doing Olympic lifts (cleans and snatches), plyometrics (explosive jumping moves including variations on box jumps), sprints and core-strengthening work. To simulate pushing her heavy sled, she pushes a big box with weights on top. 'It's all about getting more explosive and quick off the block, and stronger and faster overall,' she says.
Nike Inc. published this content on 09 January 2018 and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 09 January 2018 11:04:03 UTC.
Original documenthttps://news.nike.com/news/simidele-adeagbo-african-skeleton-athlete
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