Athletic Trainer Gets Inside Look At Olympic Training

By Nancy K. Crevier

Newtown resident Jody Murray is pleased to have had the opportunity to spend two weeks as part of a rotating volunteer medical team at the US Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, Calif., in July. Ms Murray, the owner of Acupuncture Therapy at 300 Federal Road in Brookfield, and a national board certified and licensed acupuncturist as well as a nationally certified athletic trainer, is an allied medical health professional who has provided health care to the general public and athletes for more than 20 years. She holds a master’s degree in exercise physiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and graduated from the three-year acupuncture program at New York College on Long Island in 1997.

By volunteering at the California Olympic Training Center from July 6 to July 21, Ms Murray took the first step toward what she hopes might one day turn into a chance to serve as an athletic trainer at the Olympics. Only a limited number of people are accepted to take part in the two-week rotation, said Ms Murray, and upon completion are then further evaluated. A select number of those people may be asked to accompany a traveling team. By serving with traveling teams, a volunteer is then eligible to be selected to be a trainer at the Olympics. It is a slow process, though, she said, and highly competitive. “But if that happened, I would embrace it,” she said.

She had been aware of this program for several years, but it was not until this spring that she felt she was at a place in her work and life that would allow her to pursue a position as an athletic trainer at the Olympics.

She is hopeful that while older than many of the athletic trainers vying for a spot at the Olympics, her focus on acupuncture will set her aside. “That’s my ‘in,’ I hope,” she said. Acupuncture to treat Olympic athletes has only very recently begun to be utilized, particularly since the Olympics in China last summer. “I’m hoping that avenue might lead to something,” she said.

 “The first time I ever heard of acupuncture was when I was an undergraduate student, and a doctor visiting from China did an acupuncture demonstration in one of my classes. This was before Nixon opened relations with China, even, so acupuncture was not something we were even familiar with,” said Ms Murray. She was impressed at the time, but it was many more years before she attended an acupuncture workshop and once again realized that here was a method whose time had come in the Western culture, and one that she deeply believed could be a vitally important tool in healing. “Acupuncture is very powerful,” she said. “It was a perfect complement to what I was doing. I felt it was very much on the cusp of becoming the next big thing in health.”

Acupuncture uses extremely fine needles of varying lengths inserted into specific body points to restore the flow of energy and the body’s balance. It is an ancient Chinese practice that has gradually gained recognition in Western medicine, said Ms Murray.

Acupuncture is also what makes her business different, she said. “I have additional knowledge from being an athletic trainer. I do more in the way of a home exercise program for my clients [than a traditional acupuncturist might do].”

The US Olympic Committee apparently agreed that her qualifications would make her a valuable asset to the rotating team of medical volunteers at the training facility, even though California licensing laws did not allow her to practice acupuncture while she was there. She was accepted into the program just two months after applying, rather than the two-year wait many applicants experience.

“I was still using my acupuncture knowledge, though,” said Ms Murray, as well as ultrasound, electrical stimulation, laser to stimulate acupuncture points, and state-of-the-art rehabilitation equipment, to treat the athletes at the center.

The two-week rotation was an opportunity not only to interact with her colleagues from all over the nation and to see a cutting-edge training facility, but also a chance to work with some of the most elite athletes in the nation.

While many high-profile Olympic athletes pass through the center for a few weeks at a time, the majority of those training are not yet highly recognizable names, she said, and many of the athletes with whom she worked were involved in the more obscure sports: BMX bike racing, women’s bobsled, skeleton sled, archery, and kayaking.

They ranged in age from 18 to their late 20s, with many of them being full-time residents at the center. Training is their full-time job, and it is this that sets them apart from the general population of athletes, said Ms Murray.

The days were long, starting at 7:30 am and going until 6:30 pm or later when she accompanied a team off-site, and filled with very physical work — “These are some big boys and girls we were working with,” she said — but working with the young athletes was a pleasure.

“These athletes take really good care of themselves. They might be in to see me several times a day for treatment when something feels slightly not right. They don’t let small problems become big problems, because saying ‘I can’t go out’ is not an option for them,” she explained.

What little quiet time she did have allowed her to spend some time observing the athletes in training, and some of her clients took time to involve her in their sports. She left the archery field with a silver dollar-sized bruise on her inner elbow and renewed respect for the bow and arrow sport. The firsthand knowledge was helpful in treating complaints. Knowing that an archer, for example, held a static position for four to five hours a day while firing off 600 arrows, enabled her to know what areas needed treatment. She passed on the standing bet at the kayak boat house, though, for anyone to sit upright in one of the racing canoes for one minute. The sleek and narrow kayaks neatly dumped each challenger into the water within ten seconds, and no one in the two weeks that she was at the center managed to collect the $100 prize.

World champion track team members provided her with a stunning closeup of their intense training one afternoon. Watching a BMX rider recovering from a leg injury shoot off of a rolling hill and land on just a back wheel not only made her cringe as she noted treatment he might later require, but filled her with awe at his intense devotion to his sport.

“I can’t say enough good things about these young people,” she said. “They were humble, open, and talked to us and explained anything we asked them to explain. Remember, every two weeks they are seeing new faces in the medical team. But there was not an ego among them.”

Overall, her two weeks at the US Olympic Training Center was a high on her life experiences, Ms Murray said. How the athletes approached their practice and how they approached therapy was revitalizing. “Anytime you get to meet people who are at the top of what they do, you take something away. There was a lot of motivation and a lot of positive thinking. I would love to instill upon the patients that I see in my practice the positive energy toward healing that I witnessed in these athletes.”

Meanwhile, she continues to carry the torch toward one day being at the side of Olympic athletes at the world competitions, and practices patience as she waits for word that will put her there.