After fielding a few million questions over several months and years Ive put together an (admittedly somewhat jumbled) article for you that outlines how I think about strength and conditioning / sports training in general. You could also subtitle it Why a lot of training people do doesnt work or better yet Why youve been doing Crossfit for months and havent got any better at anything.... Here we go... ...if we examine the training of most athletes you will find a lot of work that builds the wrong bio-motor qualities, reduces skill level and massively increases fatigue. More often than not these training errors are compounded by coaching staff who use fatigue as a measuring stick for performance gain. Let me make this very clear; any fool can fatigue an athlete. The goal of a coach is to improve performance. The two things are completely independent of one another; in fact they are usually in opposition. Fatigue lowers short term preparedness, reduces skill acquisition, reduces motivation and increases injury risk. If you have to induce fatigue, then at least make sure it will have a worthwhile effect on long term fitness. This is the principle of training economy - getting the greatest possible improvement in sports performance from the least possible input of training time and / or subsequent fatigue. Remember also that in much the same was as adaptation is specific to the stimulus presented, so is the fatigue incurred. Fatigue can be specific to motor pattern, force output, speed of force development, duration of activity, muscle groups and so on. Quick summary.... The SAID Principle (Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand) should govern your training as, in short, you become what you train. Specificity applies to both skills and underlying motor qualities such as speed, acceleration, power or strength. Specificity also applies to fatigue; fatigue accumulated through one activity will have a lesser effect on a subsequent disparate activity than on a similar one. Fatigue and loading should be monitored throughout a training cycle and future training planned around this data. Note that word cycle. All training is cyclic with peaks and troughs in volume, loading, perceived exertion, accumulated fatigue etc etc. An athlete has a wide spectrum of elements which must be addressed on a consistent and regular basis such as strength training, flexibility work, endurance development, speed and power training, agility and balance, and, of course, developing the techniques and tactics of the chosen sport if there is one. So, how are these aspects managed in the context of a day, week, month, or longer period of time? Noted strength scientist Vladimir Zatsiorsky, in his fantastic text “Science and Practice of Strength Training”, observes that “fitness gain decreases if several motor abilities are trained simultaneously during one workout, microcycle, or mesocycle . . . The (athlete) cannot adapt to so many different requirements at the same time . . . when the training targets are distributed over several mesocycles in sequence, the fitness gain increases. Zatsiorsky further observes training is a trade-off between conflicting demands. On the one hand, an athlete cannot develop maximum strength, anaerobic endurance, and aerobic endurance all at the same time. The greatest gains in one direction (for instance, maximum strength) can be achieved only if an athlete concentrates on this type of training for a reasonably long time-at least one or two mesocycles. This way, strength will be improved more effectively than if a more varied program were pursued . . . one should train sequentially-one target after the other. That is the voice of many years and millions of pounds worth of research talking. The Soviet scientists in the 60’s and 70’s changed elite sports training forever with their introduction of percentage protocols and Periodisation. They discovered these techniques by virtue of their huge research machine and total involvement in athlete’s lives, and for a while this training science made them world leaders in most sports. Then the West caught up with the science and the advantage was lost. Almost all elite level athletes all over the world now use Periodisation strategies. Interestingly enough the “train all qualities at once, all the time, progressively” model of training that most people in gyms nowadays use was evaluated and completely discarded by the Soviets in the late 1960’s. Why? Because under the unflinching eye of science the regular model for training just doesn’t stand up. It simply does not work as well as a Periodised approach. Another problem with the simultaneous approach is that volume (the amount of training done during a given period of time) and intensity (the difficulty of training) are both necessary, but also antagonistic, facets of the training load. When volume is high, intensity is low, and vice-versa. An ancient saying among weight lifters is You can work hard, and you can work long, but you cant work hard for long. This is one of the few instances where the folklore is correct. Since athletes cant effectively emphasize both volume and intensity at the same time, the only remaining option is to emphasize them sequentially in training. Each phase of high volume training acts like a foundation for the phase of high intensity training that follows (which could be anywhere from one to sixteen weeks, depending on a host of factors, including ones personal philosophy of planning). I hope that helps clear a few things up. Feel free to fire away with any questions.
Posted on: Thu, 17 Jul 2014 13:39:15 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015