Dr Mel Siff Blog

Here is the fourth and final part of Dr Verkhoshansky’s liberally translated
article on the validity of periodisation adapted from ‘Teoriya i Prakt
Fizischeskoi Kultury’ (1997). The extensive bibiography of some 120
references has been omitted for sake of brevity. As Dr Verkhoshansky
remarked at the end of the article: “The size of the article resulted in its
bibliography providing only a small part of the work referring to the
critical analysis of the problem being considered.”

The next article in this series will be a Bulgarian critique of Dr
Verkhoshansky’s article. Note that all of Dr Verkhoshansky’s criticism was
directed at the work of Matveev. There are many models of periodisation, a
large variety of which are discussed elsewhere (Siff & Verkhoshansky
“Supertraining” 1999 Ch 6).

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THE PATH TO A SCIENTIFIC THEORY AND METHODOLOGY
OF SPORTS TRAINING

PART 4 (Final)

J.V.Verkhoshansky

6. The rudimentary part of periodisation lies in its manner of constructing
the training process.

The idea of periodisation consists of joining separate parts of the training
process in a linear sequence. The main structural unit in training is the
microcycle. The training process is represented as the sum of microcyles
aligned in a chain, the logic of linearity being defined only speculatively,
mainly on a principle of “it is possible, so it is valid to use standard
separate ‘typical’ microcycles with various names” thus ‘lining up’like
children’s building blocks under various names appointed by Matveev for the
longer parts of training process such as “mesocycles” which, in turn, are
united in “macrocycles”. Such a linear principle of constructing the
training process, according to Matveev, allows one to overcome the familiar
vagueness of the structure of training and to more accurately reflect its
actual variability.

However, subsequent research has not confirmed this conclusion. It tends to
reveal a na€  ïve primitiveness of similar technology and has shown, firstly, in
practice, that other methods produce results indistinguishable from those of
periodisation; secondly, they have shown the superficiality of models of the
training process as a linear combination of certain standard parts and,
finally, they have again confirmed the opinion of experts that the progress
of a sport is unpredictable if one uses periodisation.

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7. One of most essential deficiencies in periodisation highlighted today by
progress in the biological sciences, is that it consists only two factors in
regulating the training of the athlete, namely the volume and intensity of
the training load. This concept does not consider different ways for
constructing training, except, perhaps, for the primitive undulation of the
total amount of the load. Thus, since this involved a total increase of
volume of loads over all years of sports programming , periodisation remained
the primary factor for increasing the efficiency of the training process.
This explains why periodisation became not only a procedure of training, but
also the entire system for preparing athletes.

Thus, outside the field of vision of periodisation, there was the vast field
of adaptable processes, associated with the transformation of the qualitative
characteristics of external influences on the body into internal physical
changes. Misunderstanding problems of specificity of adaptation of the body
has involved Matveev in verbose reasoning on the so-called ‘carry-over’ of
skills and potential talents – a genuine phenomenon, inherent mainly to
physical training, but not to the specifics of the major sports. Now, for
example, if a physical education student in physiology today wrote in an
examination, that “many cyclic locomotor exercises, obviously varying
according to their specific form (running, swimming, skiing and a bicycle
etc.), are close in nature to the actual competitive exercises on the basis
of their character of displaying endurance and other motor qualities”, a low
mark would be awarded.

Questioning periodisation appeared powerless before the person of its
creator, though it was only necessary to open books to easily discern that
the phenomenon of selective, specific adaptive reactions of the body to a
given mode of training has been known for a long time. There it would also
have been noted that this is one of the major criteria for choosing the
content and organising training loads, the primary orientation of their
training influence and their general composition.

Today, when possibilities of the finding new methods of periodisation have
strongly decreased, and volumes of loads have reached a reasonable limit,
management of specific training strongly influences the training load,
which offers a unique way of increasing the effectiveness of training of
highly qualified athletes. Reasoning based on ‘carry-over’,especially in
emphasizing the role of periodisation in sporting preparation, return one to
the level of the 1950s.

The literature concerning the physiological mechanisms of the specificity of
training is extensive. Ignoring these insights – one more most serious
aspects of periodisation -involved huge expenditure of money and time, as
well as great energy devoted by athletes to training with very little effect.
Finally, it ruined the plans of preparation of many athletes who aimed to
achieve top sporting performance.

So, four fundamental defects have deprived periodisation of any theoretical
and practical importance:

1. Weak representations of actual sports activities, of technology in the
preparation of very qualified athletes, and of specificity in the
professional skill of the trainer.

2. The primitiveness of the methodological concept, a model not supported by
an objective foundation; mental methodological principles; absence of proven
practical recommendations.

3. The disregard for biological research.

4. The neglect of progress in adjacent sciences and experimental work in the
field of sports training.

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CONCLUSION

Very often critical remarks end with conciliatory conclusions such as
“nevertheless the merit (of the author, the theory, a literary work and so
forth) consists of…..”. I cannot follow this principle. I want to
emphasize that, if theory and practice had not followed the path of
periodisation theory, as planned by our trainers and scientists over the past
50 years, by today we would have achieved a far superior scientific, more
consistent, advanced theory and methodology of sports training.

But for the carelessness of the former federal, political and educational
authorities in the USSR, a main specialist subject of the curriculum for
physical culture would not have been be submitted by the scholastic demagogy
cultivating obscurantism of scientific knowledge; and whole generations of
students and post-graduate students would not have been subjected to the
deformed representations about the sports profession. Many capable experts
would have been freed to publish and exchange ideas and experience, as well
as successfully presenting substantial dissertations and endowing the theory
of sports training with a solid scientific basis.

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Dr Mel Siff