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Here is the next installment of this controversial article.

THE PATH TO A SCIENTIFIC THEORY AND METHODOLOGY
OF SPORTS TRAINING

PART 3

JV Verhoshansky

4. Scientific and practical inadequacies in periodisation and the basis of
the theory of sports training obviously neglect biological knowledge and
reduce them to general pedagogics. Undoubtedly, general pedagogics bears a
certain relation to the theory of sports training, but does not provide
either a serious basis, nor an objective quantification of the subject matter
according to the strict scientific method. Consequently, it cannot serve as
a theoretical or methodological base for the theory of sports training.
However, pedagogical theories of sports training still managed to furnish
ample opportunity for creating unsubstantiated, eloquent mental models.

Their “scientific character” was founded on the criteria of Soviet system of
that time which relied on reasoning based on the “education of communist
morals” and on “the socio-pedagogical organization of sports activity”.
However, as is known, a house built on sand will not last forever.

It should be noted that the pedagogical (i.e. educational) model of sports
training was always accepted by the experts, as it always involved issues of
“education” of force or endurance, “education” of speed of movements, or
flexibility and so forth. However, it was explicit nonsense. It is profane
to apply such analogies. For example, if we applied that sort of analogy to
Soviet biology then, we would have party ideologists of that time fooling
science with similar concepts about the “education” of plants.

Concepts about professional skill of the trainer and scientific criteria for
training were all that simplistic. Skill was reduced according to
recommendations with even a minimum scientific foundation, often just “to
educate consciously for the ideals of communism”. The focus on overriding
pedagogical objectives of knowledge in biology, biomechanics, biophysics,
physiology and other natural sciences was not so obligatory, because they did
not cover the public scope of sports.

More specifically, the ideas of “fundamentals of sports training” and
periodisation are also equally primitive. Actually, complete and systematic
validation of these methods in academic publications is not present. However,
all of this emerged by assembling separate fragments and declarations,
including so-called pedagogical supervision, recording of sports results in
separate sports, the out-of-date analytic-synthetic principle, and the
generalization of experience of sports practice “in part supported by
research material and supplemented by theoretical reasons”.

With the purpose of giving scientific validity to these methods, it was
stated, for example, by the Council of Federation that carefully computed
analysis was essential for overcoming subjective reasoning. Such computing
analysis consisted of calculating “reasonably rigid bottom critical zones”
concerning sports achievements, with limits not being below 1.5-2.0 %
increase from personal record achievement in cyclic sports and 3-5% in power
sports. If the athlete showed results below these “critical zones”, the
methods of training and levels of progress were not acceptable to the Council
of Federation.

As to the dynamics of the Council of Federation, here “the computing analysis
” consists of fitting a curve through the best results expressed in
percentage of the maximum achievement. This method is illustrated by curves
carefully drawn by hand, as it was required that the graphs reflected the
“laws of waviness of dynamics of the Council of Federation”. Today it is
unnecessary to accept orientation to sports results and the wavy dynamics
hidden in the wavy dynamics of the Council of Federation as a serious
technique for investigating the “laws” of sports training.

It is especially naive to look for verification based upon the notorious
peaks of the Council of Federation and only on the examples of two oustanding
runners, R.Klarka and H.Rono, whose organization of training is very poorly
known, besides the fact that (probably, fortunately for them) they knew
nothing about ‘periodisation’ training and the “laws of management of
dynamics of the Council of Federation”.

The weakness of periodisation emerges in its little scientific merit, its low
informative value and the uncertainty of material from which the basic
generalizations, principles and “laws” were extracted. It was derived mainly
by analysing unknown intricacies of the available data on the volume and
dynamics of the training loads performed by some athletes.

Thus, unfortunately, despite the various arguments and a technical
definitions based on the methodology and rules ostensibly contained in the
periodisation model, it may be seen that periodisation has no serious
experimental foundation and it is not “the lantern illuminating the road to
the traveller ” about which Francis Bacon spoke. Consequently, the concept
of “periodisation”, once conceived as the training manual for top level
sport, finally has been questioned as suitable scholastic subject matter and
has forever separated its author from advanced sciences and the practice of
sport. Therefore subsequent articles, designed on the basis of suggestions
made to unsophisticated readers about the exclusiveness and versatility of
periodisation are no longer valid.

——————————————

5. There are serious doubts concerning the nature of periodisation and its
formalised, mechanical reductionism of the training process on the basis of
subjectively selected components of all kinds, including cycles, stages, and
periods which comprise ‘periodisation’.

The argument here was very simple: the training process and sports
perfection cannot occur outside the analogous phases of acquisition,
conservation and temporal loss as laid down by the Council of Federation.
Here, one notes that appropriate training periods stand out: preparatory, and
transitional, and the organization of “macrocyclic” training as determined
by the management of general progress by the Council of Federation. This
Council categorically asserts that “all other forms of construction of trainin
g, even though they may seem good, inevitably will die off if they contradict
the objective laws of the given process”.

Formal following of the laws of development of the Council of Federation has
resulted in distortion of representations about tasks and a content for a
long time the preparatory in sports preparatory and competitive periods. The
rectilinear logic of an explanation of their problems (preparation, then
competitions) not only conformed little to objective reality, but it also
disoriented trainers and sports scientists.

So, the preparatory period was reduced to an analogy of intense “actual
spadework” in the realm of normal society. The competitive period intended
for competitions and the “stabilization” phase were identified at the behest
of the Council of Federation and consisted of competitive and so-called
intermediate and restorative preparatory mesocycles.

Thus, in the competitive period, the traditional model of periodisation
declares that the training of athletes is only realized, restored and
supported, but such a primitive understanding of “periodisation” is far from
representing the facts. Actually, in many cyclic and team sports during the
competitive period, the level achieved earlier is trained not only for
reasons of maintenance, but also for development. If we appreciate the
theory of adaptation, the prime objective of the competitive period consists
of completing the current cycle of long-term adaptation of the body to a
specific regime, as well as raising it to a new steady level of special
functionalities.

Here also it is necessary to keep in mind the increase in the length of the
competitive period, the number of the important competitions in one year and
the intense demands of the schedule of competitions for each sport. In
particular, in international cycling, the duration of the competitive period
reaches 8-8.5 months in one year. Thus, clearly, a discrete preparatory
period cannot be long enough to allow “fundamental preparation”. Therefore,
the fundamental progress of the training process actually occurs during the
long-term competitive period.

Mechanistic distinction of the preparatory and competitive periods, plus
their various tasks, has seriously disoriented sports practice and led to
extremely harmful representations of what the athlete apparently accumulates
in the preparatory period and realizes in competition.

Official plans and complex programs of preparation for the combined teams of
the country not only abounded with similar terminology, but also followed
the content and principles of the organization of training that did not
provide optimum conditions. This adversely affected decisions regarding
problems of preparation over the annual cycle, distorted all strategy for
organising training and violated the natural course of the adaptable process
which provides the foundation for progress of sporting skill. To continue to
follow principles such as “periodisation” is all the same as if an orchestra
were to liberally transpose musical scores and rules across different
muscical situations. It is equally absurd to allow periodisation to distort
modern sports in this manner.

—————————–

Translated and adapted from Teoriya i Praktika Fizischekoi, 1997

Dr Mel Siff

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Dr Mel Siff Blog. The Dr Mel Siff Blog - Dedicated to the Author of Supertraining & Facts and Fallacies of Fitness. Dr Mel Siff on Physics in Sports · Dr Mel Siff Re Brown Fat · PERIODISATION- FACT OR FALLACY - Part 2. Pages. Archives .

Dr Mel Siff Blog. The Dr Mel Siff Blog - Dedicated to the Author of Supertraining & Facts and Fallacies of Fitness. Dr Mel Siff on Physics in Sports · Dr Mel Siff Re Brown Fat · PERIODISATION- FACT OR FALLACY - Part 2. Pages. Archives .