Dr Mel Siff Blog

For many years, some coaches have been pointing out the importance of
so-called “functional training” in the sense that all training methods and
exercises in sports should be aimed at the final goal of enhancing the
functioning or performance of the athlete’s body in a specific sport. In
this quest, exercises and phases of training have been identified as General
and Sport Specific, a scheme that has been deeply involved with the concept
of periodisation or cycling of loading.

Now, all these years later, “functional training” has become the latest
buzzword, a latter day rediscovery of the principle of enhancing physical
function in specific situations.

However, the various new figureheads in the fitness marketplace have started
classifying various exercises and training regimes as being “functional” or
“non-functional”, thereby subtly distorting what “functional” conditioning
really meant. You can hardly open a strength/fitness magazine or attend a
fitness convention without “functional training” being paraded about like the
Crown Jewels of England.

In this regard, is it really appropriate and correct to simplistically
classify certain activities as “non-functional” because they are not the same
as or similar to those encountered in a given sport? Who can say that
walking, swimming, bicep curls, stair climbing, karate, fencing and so forth
are entirely non-functional for an athlete in a sport such as football,
powerlifting, wrestling or soccer? We can state that these activities may
not be the most productive for enhancing some component of physical fitness,
but can we really classify such activities as “non-functional”? Are people
confusing general and sport specific exercises, single and multiple joint
methods of training when they talk about “functionality” and
“non-functionality”?

Functionality depends not only on the exercise itself, but on many other
factors, such as the pattern of execution, the characteristics of the
athlete, reps, sets, manner of execution, the phase of training, current
physical and mental state of the athlete, the overall training program and
many such factors. An exercise that is highly sport specific and
“functional” at one time might be equally “non-functional” at another time.

Functionality is not context-free and individual-independent, so that it
appears to be a very misused term at present. But, we know that the fitness,
sports and health markets rapidly latch onto words and ideas which sell
services and commodities, so we are once again being faced with the dubious,
unthinking and misleading use of a term which fitness clients, therapists and
athletes really think is something novel and special.

Certainly, the use of this term may increase the awareness of promoting
specificity in training among those who have not encounterd the importance of
“holistic” training, but along with this benefit, come a series of training
misconceptions and incompletenesses.

Dr Mel C Siff

Here is the next article from the Russian journal, “Theory and Practice of
Physical Training” on the concept of periodisation. It has been liberally
translated and adapted for Western readers from the Russian and should be
read in the light of the preceding article by Dr Verkhoshansky on the same
topic (posted here over the past few weeks). References (mainly in Russian)
have been excluded for the sake of brevity.

——————————-

ABOUT SOME PERMANENT FACTORS IN PRESENT SPORTS TRAINING

Professor T Zheljazkov
National Sports Academy, Sofia, Bulgaria

The occasion for this present article was the kind invitation of the
editorial board of magazine ‘Theory and Practice of Physical Training’ to
involve participation of foreign experts in discussing problems of sports
training.

The problem on which I focus concerns some points in Verhoshansky’s article
(‘Theory and Practice of Physical Training’, 1998, No 2) which does not seem
to have been submitted in spirit of the best traditions of scientific
criticism.

First of all it is erroneous to consider LP Matveev’s concept of
“periodization” as the complete theory of sports training. I do not accept
the judgement that it has played a negative role in the field of elite sports
preparation. The outstanding achievements of sportsmen of the former Soviet
Union vigorously disprove this point of view. Verkhoshansky’s emotional
conclusions that the theory of periodization is constructed on “primitive
methodology ” and ” scholastic demagogy ” also are bewildering. It is
entirely invalid to state that the crisis in cyclic sports and loss of
advanced positions in separate disciplines of track and field athletics also
are due to the “ill-starred” theory of periodization by Matveev.

In this regard I shall pay attention to some key features in present sports
training which provide the foundation for high level, stable sporting
performances.

It is well known that progress of the theory and a practice of sports
training historically is inextricably related to the growing social role of
sport in society. Retrospective analysis of preparation and participation of
elite of international sports in Olympic, world, European and other large
competitions shows that present record achievements in sports are the final
result of the cumulative intellectual and physical efforts of a broad group
of the experts involved the overall training process.

It follows that the intellectualization of sports training is the dominant
factor of progress in sport in the current sports preparation. High
efficiency in this respect is the result of a number of individual
components, namely:

1. The growing integration of various scientific disciplines, including
physiology, psychology, biomechanics, biochemistry, pedagogics and many others

2. The intensive use of telemetering, electronic and computing facilities in
present day training

3. The universal application of controlled scientific methods (especially
mathematical techniques in research)

4. The methodological application of integrated scientific appoaches such as
cybernetics, systems theory, and information theory.

This type of interactive communication between sports, science and technology
provides a qualitatively new dimension to current sports training.

Unlike in industrial production, where intellectualization facilitates or
completely eliminates physical work, in sports it intensifies its involvement.
With increases in sports performance, all of the physical and mental efforts
which determine record achievements also increase. It raises the problem of
the limits of training and competitive loading, as well as the problems of
psychological, moral character and health associated with them.

Analysis of the main systems of sports preparation shows, that in the area of
training there are some factors special importance that stand out.

The value of interrelation between two main principles of sports training
grows, namely “the adequacy and expediency of training loads” and “the unity
of the general and specialised preparation “. We deduce a number of priority
problems in training, especially:

1. The regular and goal-directed tasks associated with the maximal progress
of the integrated functional capabilities of the body. Centrally involved are
three components of a human mobility: aerobic, power (force) and high-speed
capabilities (in the proper proportions, depending on the specificity of the
relevant activity);

2. Scientifically proved technology for assuring peak efficiency of the
means used and the methods which shape total performance

3. The maximal transformation of functionalities in an appropriately
integrated structure, that displays high efficiency of technical skill.

The high level of functional performance represents a material basis for the
systematic, high-intensity preparation and participation in competitions
which are imposed by the present sports calendar. In this respect, typical
examples involve competition in the Olympics which for some sports continue
for 10-12 days; competitions in National Basketball Association (NBA) and
National Hockey League (NHL), where play can involve 90-100 meetings within
6-7 months, with frequent travel against a background of huge physical and
mental stress; and tennis tournaments in which competitors have to play
matches every day for many days without reduced efficiency of playing.
Similar loads are characteristic of sports gymnastics, rowing, wrestling and
many other sports. It determines the fundamentals of specialised base
preparation without which tehnical-tactical perfection is impossible.

With this information in mind, there arise qualitative variations in the
periodisation of sports training, that is, in the structure and content of
training process over time.

Classical application of periodisation, that in its basic concept describes
the phasic nature of progress in sporting form, has not lost its fundamental
importance, although in the technology of its modelling, application and
management there are serious qualitative limitations in some respects (which
may be modified in the light of modern research and sporting experience).
The problems (with simple traditional periodisation) relate to a number of
causes:

1. The commercialisation of sports offers athletes various material and moral
motivations which direct them to selectively participate in various ranked
sports competitions;

2. The accumulated theoretical and practical experience in studying the
mechanisms of adaptation (mainly in the medical, biological and psychological
fields) helps in devising effective means and methods of long-term
maintenance of training. On this basis we can determine more flexible forms
for achieving progress or managing temporary loss of sporting form;

3. The professionalisation of training and competitive activity has brought
in a number of correcting means into the training of athletes, accordingly to
each program structure and its macro-, meso- and micro-cyclic content
(especially the last). As a result of it, strongly pronounced differentiation
of scheduling and management of sports training becomes available, depending
on the specificity of each sport.

The role of goal-directed and long-term motivation for preparation for
competition and participation in it, the mobilisation of all physical and
moral efforts (and even various deprivations) in the name of achieving high
objectives raise the likelihood of maximum achievement in sport. Successful fo
rmation of these qualities depends on objective and subjective prerequisites
such as:

1. The availability of a favorable social environment for assessing and
stimulating (materially and morally) these efforts – i.e. the result of
increasing socialisation of sports in a country;

2. The development of special-purpose means, methods and forms of
influencing the intellectual, strong-willed and emotional world of the
athlete via the use of appropriate experts (psychologists, sociologists,
physicians etc.), who specialise in imparting stable behaviour and reactions
under extreme conditions of training and competition;

3. Increases in the general and specialised culture of the athlete as
prerequisites for consciously cultivated, strongly-motivated self-preparation
and self-assessment outside the world of training and competition.

The formation of long-term effective motivation is linked to a number of new
factors in big sports today. Until recently, leading in this respect were
ideological and political issues to which the Olympic Games fell victim in
Moscow in 1980 and Los Angeles in 1984. The positive change in international
relations now is also matched by the prestige, educational and integrating
functions of sport.

The systems approach to the development of sports skill has in recent years
enabled us to try to grasp not only the structural complexity of external
influences, but also the dynamics and nature of exhaustion and regenerative
processes (which may be used to modify classical periodisation). A systems
approach created indispensable scientific-methodical prerequisites for
constructing the present systems of restoration as essential components of
high achievement in sport.

These systems implicate a number of fundamental installations which determine
the means, techniques and forms of restoration, and the rational construction
of training over time.

It is known that the dynamics of regeneration, regardless of kind, have a
logistical and heterochronical character, i.e., restoration and
supercompensation of the various functions of the body do not proceed
simultaneously and linearly. Thus, the simplistic application of “classical”
principles of loading (each subsequent load is performed in phases of
continued gradual progressive overload) sharply limits the possibility for
creative training and lowers the efficiency of the training process.

Research into the process of exhaustion have revealed some of the complex
mechanisms of this phenomenon and leading factors which cause discoordinated
functioning of various organs and systems. Paying more attention to other
factors of performance (which restore faster) enables the athlete to increase
the volume of training with more creative effect.

It follows that the system of restoration should be constructed in present
sports training on a rigorous basis, with regard to the laws and mechanisms
of adaptive processes. This emphasizes the application of relevant technology
(to develop and modify different methods of ‘periodisation’). Here we note
the following:

1. The value of complex restoration which includes a wide range of sports -
pedagogical, fizikal’nyh grows, psychological, medical means, methods and
forms of accelerating regeneration over time or directly after training or
competition, as well as for preventive maintenance and treatment of trauma
and disease;

2. The technological maintenance of the body’s systems with the help of
modern (mainly portable) equipment and fully equipped laboratories that
guarantee accurate diagnostics and effective regenerative process;

3. The procedure of differential restoration in direct communication with
training and competitions is improved. For this purpose I make wide use of
sports pedagogical, psychological and medical means within the framework of
so-called regenerative microcyles.

One of main criteria of efficiency of each training system is the level of
the control of major factors of achievement in sport. Undoubtedly, it is a
subsystem in which significant progress has been made in recent years. It is
here that the applied achievements of separate sciences are focused:
electronics, biomechanics, biochemistry, computer modelling and many others.

As a matter of fact, the control includes three integrally associated
factors: measurement, assessment and optimization of permanent factors on
achievement in sport. Efficiency of this activity in present systems of
sports preparation is determined first of all by their organizational,
technological and scientific-methodical maintenance.

In the scientific organization of the controlling sports conditioning the
following activities remain:

1. Creation of special purpose links for the controlling research, education
and training in applied colleges, special-purpose laboratories, institutions
etc.) according to material and personnel maintenance;

2. Creation of indispensable coordination and collaboration of these links
with bodies which carry out the training process, such as trainers, clubs and
federations.

3. The organization of effective controls of performance involving decisions
on major corrections in the ovberall system of training

In technical maintenance of control the main attention is on three
fundamental issues:

1. Technical equipment for complex control of stationary conditions. In
essence, it involves hardware systems for the integrated assessment of the
structural-functional status and mental condition of the athlete,as well as
some fundamental biomechanical components of mobility, etc.;

2. Technical equipment for the current control in-the-field: movable
laboratories with portable maintenance and special-purpose studies on
training bases;

3. Technical equipment for control during training, including telemetering
equipment for monitoring the cardiorespiratory system, lactate analyzers of
the byproducts of metabolism, and video equipment for the biomechanical
analysis

In the scientific-methodical maintenance of control the central position is
occupied with establishing a normative basis for the assessment and
optimization of the major factors which determine achievement in sport. Its
practical cost is determined by the availability of the following components:

1. Systems of functional tests and parameters for complex or differentiating
assessment of the condition of the athlete at various stages of sports
preparation;

2. Reliable mathematical-statistical methods for processing the raw data and
appropriate criteria for assessing the results;

3. The establishment of assessment and application systems based on the above
investigated factors (scales, tables, nomogram etc.);

4. The optimization of patterns for increasing the efficiency of training
process by influencing various factors of achievement in sport.

The analysis of world experience in recent years shows the value of the
methods discussed above. It is rtelevant here to note the creation of new
special-purpose institutions for scientific and training investigation, for
example in Calgary, Canberra, Colorado Springs, Peking, the revamped Leipzig
research college, the Central Scientific Institutions of Russia and Bulgaria,
and many others.

In accepting the position that permanent factors in present sports training
are integrally connected with scientific and technical progress, logically
there is a question as to what degree experts in this area can use their
tools of computation, ergometric systems, present research procedures,
information systems and so on. In addition, progress depends on to what
degree they can propose new ideological projects, training models and
practical decisions to ensure short and long term progress. For this purpose
it is necessary to depart from the circle of narrow practical knowledge of a
specific sport and discipline. The output from this framework should take
place by unifying the differentiation and integration of cognitive process.
The further deepening and expansion of special-purpose knowledge of sports
training is impossible without acquaintance with the problems of
bioenergetics, biomechanics, ergometry, functional diagnostics, the
quantitative analysis and modelling of complex phenomena and processes.

It does not at all replace the entire concept of periodisation, but enriches
it with the theoretical and methodological advances in sports training as a
complex many-sided, pedagogical process under the extreme conditions of
training and competition.

———————————————–

Dr Mel C Siff

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).

—————————————————————————

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.

——————————————

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.

—————————————————————————

Dr Mel Siff

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

Here is the next episode in this unique criticism of traditional
periodisation theory and practice.

THE PATH TO A SCIENTIFIC THEORY AND METHODOLOGY
OF SPORTS TRAINING

PART 2

YV Verkhoshansky

Why has the concept of “periodisation” in sports training stopped the clock?
Today there is no sense in furthering its weaknesses and promoting its
explicitly absurd ideas. We shall leave it for history and student projects
and we shall now confine our attention mainly to methodological and
scientific inadequacies in this concept so as to avoid similar errors in the
future.

1. The most serious defect in periodisation is its lack of theoretical
validity, and its neglect of biological and scientific advances in sport.

Today already there is no need to convince anyone of the necessity to
establish biologically sound theories of sports training, since this has
repeatedly been pointed out by experts already. However, Matveev, the author
of periodisation does not disguise his uncooperative altitude to accepting
biological knowledge, but states that biological laws do not determine the
macrostructure of training, or define the laws for management of sporting
form.

To be honest, Matveev sometimes does flirt with theories of adaptation. He
even shows familiarity with the molecular mechanisms of adaptation (in
Meersona’s work) and does not object to “the further development of
principles of sports training more and more strongly and consistently should
be based on the theory of adaptation of the body to the physical loads,
generated in present physiology and molecular biology”. . He admits that “the
laws of adaptive processes play a part in organising the adaptative restructur
ing caused by sports activity”. But, in the same breath, he declares, that
“adaptation is only one of several aspects of raising the sportsman to new
achievements “.and that a less important aspect of this process comprises
“restructuring the state of adaptation developing at certain stages”.

The theory of adaptation should, in Matveev’s opinion, only complement the
theory of training and confirm its principles. Similar reasoning punctuates
his work, as becomes evident when he states that “the priority issue in
interpreting the process of sports perfection and the phenomena connected
with it should belong not to the theory of adaptation, but the theory of
practical progress” .

To appreciate a degree of methodological and scientific depth to
periodisation, it is necessary to pay attention to one issue. The author of
the concept makes a rather strange deduction. Investigations in sports
physiology, in his opinion, logically contain the deep description of the
physiological foundations of training, but apparently “do not contain the
direct answer to the question of how both cellular and molecular mechanisms
and processes provide the foundation for increased efficiency of bodily
functioning ” .

He declares that he “has ratified at the present time the system of
constructing training in the form of increasing intensity empirically found
to provide optimum involvement of cellular structures in the body crucial
for adaptation to physical loads.” Furthermore, he affirms that cyclically
constructed training appear effective not only for adaptation to large
physical loads, but also regarding “complex coordination (for example, in
shooting for accuracy)”. This implies a far-reaching conclusion about the
interrelation of function and genetic processes, through which a load
implicates different structures representing the universal mechanism both at
a level of the nervous centres and at a level the executor bodies.

There is no sense in offering further examples of similar pseudoscientific
reasoning. The above examples are quite enough to illustrate, first, the
gravity of their errors; secondly, that they do not further the cause of
periodisation, and; thirdly, that leading Soviet sports scientists bypassed
the periodisation movement and did not burn with the desire to join it.

Let’s pay attention only to one issue. If we examine the bibliographies of
Matveev’s publication, the work of physiologists who are quoted by the
author, such as Zimkin, Krestovnikov, Farfel and Jakovlev, refers to the
1950s. This implies that the scientific knowledge of the author is limited
to 40 years ago. If he was more familiar with the work even of domestic
scientific schools (Farfel, Jakovlev, Viru, Kassil, Letunov), as well as with
discoveries of physiology and molecular biology in sports and their
application in the theory of sports training, his judgements about “the
synthesis of nucleic acids and fibers” and “a system structural trace” would
have been more cautious. Moreover, his conclusions based only on
pedagogical principles of training rather than on work, for example, by
Meersona, on the cellular and molecular mechanisms of adaptation to physical
loads would have been less categorical.

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2. There are methodological and scientific inadequacies in periodisation,
such as the obvious confusion of the concepts of “law”, “principles”,
“fundamental positions ” and so forth, the confusion being caused by strange
and futile attempts to devise novel terms in the structuring of sports
training.

The principles of sports training, as stated in Matveev’s writings, are “the
generalization of major empiricisms from a group of sports ” and “reflect
biological laws of adaptation and sports training”. This is a strange
deduction, because knowledge of the training process is under construction
and such observations constitute largely subjective views of the content,
structure and a sequence of progress in sports training. Certainly, with
respect to advanced physical training, there are no “laws” in the rigorous
sense of this word.

The vague terminology which declares periodisation as one of “the
fundamental laws” of sports training, includes examples such as: “The
interrelation of the general and specialized preparation of the sportsman”,
as well as “Continuity and cyclicity of training process, “unity of
gradualness and the tendency to maximum loads “,”waviness of dynamics of a
load” and so forth. Yet, it is well-known that progress in the major
sports is connected with deeper processes than it is represented by
periodisation, the principles of transformation of physical potential, the
pedagogical stimulation of the unity of general and specialized physical
preparation and maximization of specialized physical loads and
functionalities of the body.

It is quite natural that the unscrupulous confusion of theories and concepts
with “laws” has led to obvious confusion with “principles” of sports
training. In this regard, the analysis of 17 textbooks on sports for
students reveals that their authors do not distinguish between the principles
of the Soviet system of physical training, and the specialized principles of
sports training, often reducing them to one group of principles of sports
training. Finally, 39 names for similar principles may be found.

Thus, in connection with the absence of a strong scientific basis for
periodisation, its conceptual framework is intrinsically controversial,
largely being far-fetched and unsubstantiated. It not only cannot serve as an
effective working tool for organising the training process, but in fact
serves as a factor which retards progress of training and the proper
preparation of the trainer’s staff.

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3. The basis of periodisation started with so-called phases of sports
development as decreed within the ideological concept of dynamics of sports
by the Council of Federation. This idea was borrowed from work by
Letunova and Prokop, one of the first studies which concluded that the basis
of perfecting sports training was determined by biological laws governing the
progress of adaptation to conditions of sports activity. They identified
three phases of this process: (a) increased trainability in sporting form,
(b) reduction in trainability (c) optimal adaptation.

However we are given the impression that, having failed to understand and
professionally develop a deep biological appreciation of the ideas of
Letunova and Prokop, the author of periodisation, Matveev, could not rise
above his primitive “pedagogical” interpretation of the nature of training.
He limited himself by not seriously examining the rigid laws of development
and management laid down by the Council of Federation, but simply changed the
name of its phases. To move forward, it is necessary to discard the old form
and produce the new.

It is easy to see, that sort of representation about the nature of training
on a position statement of dynamics by the Council of Federation offers a
limited picture of a multivariate phenomenon. Similar reasoning which was
acceptable as scientific revelation in the 1960s today look very odd.

Nevertheless, the concept of the Council of Federation was transformed into a
doctrine, some sort of “transcendental object”. Despite never-ending
discussions of its dynamics, phases of development, laws of progress, and so
forth, nowhere was there any intelligible explanation of biological essence
of all these enigmatic attributes. As a result of such theorising, Matveev,
the author of periodisation has remained stuck at the level of the 1950s and
has removed any scientific basis and prospect of progress from periodisation.

The impression exists, however, that author of periodisation all the same
does appreciate the inadequacies of the laws of progression laid down by the
Council of Federation as the foundation of periodisation training, but
obstinately ignores already prolific research on adaptation of the body to
intense muscular activity under sporting conditions, the process of
development of sporting skill, the specializations of the body during
long-term training, and the dynamics of the athlete’s condition in response to
set training loads.

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Dr Mel Siff