Articles are written by one of our members, Clive James. An ex coach, Clive wants to share his article but is not open to answer any queries or questions.

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The Coach. Issue 40. Spring 2008

 RECOVERY PRINCIPLES

This article was inspired by Frank Horwill’s contribution ‘What is the point of it?’ Issue 39 Winter 2007.

Many/mostly younger and sadly some senior athletes just do not know why they are undertaking specific sessions, hopefully, very carefully planned by the [their] Coach.  One of the main concerns is the lack of understanding of the word ‘recovery’ or ‘recs’ in particular in a track-training environment.  This article seeks to throw some light on Recovery principles and is specifically aimed at the athlete/s performing in say a 3km steeplechase to 12km Cross Country Range.

Scenario: Athletes John & Emma!! Quote: “ I like the session we’ve just done, but why can’t we run fast reps/intervals off short recoveries, surely all we need to do is run faster”

Probably heard that many times before.  The simple perhaps glib answer is that the majority of athletes and again sadly ‘some’ coaches do not understand that probably [no with certainty] that the main benefit to the physiological improvement [Heartrate/blood flow/lactate tolerance etc] of the athlete comes during the recovery.

Simply, before we get too complicated – look at this session 2 x 4 x 600m with 2 mins rec. & 4 mins between sets.  All athletes are to be treated as individuals, and it is very important that the Coach fully ‘knows’ their physiology. So this is a generalisation.  Coach instructs his/her ‘charges’ to run the 600’s at 82 secs per 400m., perhaps with Heart Rates [HR] peaking at say 172.  The Coach would expect [from personal knowledge] that after 2 mins recovery the athlete’s HR would drop to say 124, thus enabling him/her to commence the next rep.  Whilst there is a considerable element of pace judgement/speed endurance perhaps even appropriate speed, the main benefit is to physiological development, thus allowing over time the athlete to understand why he/she does interval/repetition training and to plan adjust HR max. levels, and a ‘governing’ recovery HR.

RECOVERY Principles specifically, but mainly simplified:

Injuries, breakdowns, just don’t happen, they are almost always as the result of a poor training technique, poor planning or lack of RECOVERY, stability and flexibility. So……..

Principle of OVERLOAD

A gradual increase in training load should be the aim, but once adaptation to a given load has taken place, to obtain further improvement the training intensity must be increased.  We’ll discuss volume/intensity balance.

Principle of REVERSIBILITY

Simply, if you stop training – you lose it! – a decrease in fitness will occur, so period overload is to improve fitness; maintenance training is to hold current fitness levels, and lack of training will diminish performance BUT, a big BUT REST periods are important for RECOVERY – why ??

Breaks must be allocated from training, maybe active or passive to; allow both psychological and physical RECOVERY, these should be scheduled in [with vg athletes] maybe 1 day in 7, and certainly after a major event/race, there should be a full 2/4 week recovery period, not total rest but balanced recovery- fitness levels will soon be back to normal because of the retention factor.

Principle of SPECIFICITY

Simply be specific to your specific sport, but that can include cross training which assist/s recovery, both mentally and physically.  This also includes the specificity of energy systems; sprinters and endurance athletes need different forms of running!

So the Principle of RECOVERY

Allow ‘recovery’ to enable you & your body to:

Adapt to the training undertaken, if you train too much and recover too little, you’ll become run down & fatigued.  Performance will stagnate, deteriorate and certainly not improve.  To get optimal results, you will need to Overload, Maintain and Recover in a cycle daily, weekly, monthly & annually. Planning must accommodate the important principles.

RECOVERY is as important as actual training, but there’s one other principle.

The Principle of INDIVIDUALITY

You cannot successfully adopt other peoples training regimes – you simply do not have the same physiology – mental capacity etc.  You are you, you are an individual.

Everybody adapts & responds to training in different ways, and similarly recover at different rates – consider work & family commitments, environmental & travel considerations.  An athlete & coach must customise training & recovery to suit/fit individuals.

 RECOVERY – Principles  [a little technical]

However, we expect our AS Level PE Students to understand these guidelines, so we as Coaches should understand them also:

Perhaps back a step to consider the importance of WATER turnover and TEMPERATURE regulation in the process.

WATER is absorbed through the wall of the bowel and eliminated via:

1. The kidneys in urine 2. The skin in perspiration 3. The lungs in expired air 4. The larger intestines as faeces.

Is constantly formed in all tissues, as an end product of the oxidisation of food.  Short-term imbalance can be coped with – long term is very serious. eg. In sporting terms the most serious is DEHYDRATION, mainly associated with high temperatures and long duration events.  So leads on to:

TEMPERATURE Regulation.

Body temps need to be maintained between 97 deg F & 99.5 deg F.  Heat is gained from the metabolic process, via vigorous muscular activity.  Short bursts of hard exercise can raise heat production by 10 – 16 times.

Shivering in the cold is an example of trying to create heat.

Heat is lost by radiation, conduction or evaporation [our concern] of water, through the skin or lungs. Sweat is the principle method of achieving this.  Controlling all of this is complicated, but coordinated – the BRAIN via the HYPOTHALMUS and the hormones ADRENALINE and THYROXINE interact to increase blood flow to the skin, thus increasing skin temp., also stimulating SWEAT glands to release evaporated fluid, and reduce temperature.

Care – Sweat also contains salts and electrolytes, which maintain a BALANCE and need to be replaced – increase in the sale of Electrolyte drinks!!

RECOVERY principles cont.

We now need to proceed with the other elements that contribute to Recovery in general, and the application of Coaching principles:

Perhaps the over-riding statement in this context is:

Poor pacing contributes to injuries – yes?  Injuries do not just happen; they are inevitably as a result of training technique, or lack of recovery and /or stability/flexibility issues.

Let’s look at 1. Warm Up 2.Cool down.

Bullet points:

Warm up: increases heart rate, blood flow, loosens muscles, helps movement – makes aerobic energy system ready to perform.  It should also prepare you psychologically for the training session or race ahead [if in race mode, couple it with centering techniques].

Cool down: easy jogging helps prevent blood pooling, flushes lactic acid, static stretching will also help prevent muscle soreness and aid flexibility.

Back to PACING:

Takes a lot of time, practice, patience and above all else thinking.  The intensity of training sessions to learn the craft is essential.  The athlete must get a feel for and understand the new intensities placed on his/her training regime.  The athlete must then be able to relate the training intensity to the competition phase ie. Fast first is almost always slow last – passing people in a race is far more psychologically fulfilling than being passed!!

So the best race tactics to adopt are Steady State ie. Even pace throughout, with the ability to ‘call upon’ a sprint finish or tactical surges when needed.  Surging is stressful, and is why it must be mastered in a training scenario.

Discuss! Active/Passive Recovery, both have a place and depend on the athlete and philosophy of the Coach. Briefly:

Passive – sleep, rest, generally lounge around [in track terms slow walking & stretching].

Active – very active stretching, massage, hot/cold submersion – in track terms, probably slow jogging.

Next major tactical consideration [in the recovery process] is:

Tapering: a period of training before an important race [event] – basically back off to be in peak form on race day. Basic rules follow:

Maintain intensity but reduce volume [see later]. Stay sharp, but freshen up. How long is the taper – really depends on the event, usually from an endurance perspective.

The taper is individual – depends on trial & error.  Should allow you to go into a race; fresh, sharp no muscular fatigue, mentally alert and with confidence high.  Also a time when stretching & flexibility issues can be re-assessed. Stretching is in an injury prevention tool, not a rehab one!!

Is pro-active always better than re-active? [discuss]!

Briefly: Benefit/s of Flexibility:

Reduce muscle fatigue, make for effective movement, promote economy of style & reduce possibility of injury.

In summary Recovery/ies are personal, the athlete is an individual [I again stress this], the Coach is an Individual and many of us have our own ‘pet’ principles.  However, that said, the basic and tried/tested principles of Recovery should be adhered to, by all means experiment with them, that is progress.

Pop song a few decades ago ‘There are more Questions than Answers’ and that is a healthy situation.

Clive V James

UK Athletics Level 4 Performance/International Coach

PG Dip. [Sports Coaching]. Rtd.

with ack to:

Ben Wisbey, Australia &

UK Athletics Manuals.

05/12/07. revisited Winter 2010.

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Inverted Base Pyramid Priciple

The latest article in the occasional series by Clive James, click here to read … 5++BASETheCoach

Accepted Middle Distance Tests [Some slightly amended!!]

The Cooper 12 minute or 1.5 mile run

Tables needed.

The Old USSR KOSMIN Test

Probably best at 800m level; as follows

2 x 60 secs at max. HR, stop at 60 secs, and passive recovery for 3 mins, then from stop point again 60 secs at max HR.

Tables needed but males say 800m covered = 2.02.2

900m covered = 1.50.3.

Care for female athletes, refer to the tables.

At 1,500m level the test is normally 4 x 60 secs with recs of 3 mins, 2 mins and 1 min

Same system as above, but tables needed.

Horwill’s mile has been adapted for 1,500m performances. I [CVJ] prefer to use it as follows:

1 x 400m @ 90% rpe.  with rec of 30 secs.

1 x 800m @ 95% rpe rec. of 60 secs.

1 x 400m @ speed.

Rec of 4 or 5 mins …fully recovered HR

Then an 800m-time trial.

The Coach needs to know the Athlete’s physiology, to work the predictor, but it is very accurate!!

The ‘Standard’ 5km predictor test, probably adapted by Frank Horwill is:

4 x 1600 metres with 90 secs. recoveries

Average the 4 times and multiply by 3.125 = predicted 5km time.

And in general HR terms the accepted

KARVONEN FORMULA

With a suggested amendment from Swedish physiologists.

Karvonen originally used

220 – [minus] the average resting pulse of the athlete taken 3 times, as the base:

Say average HR was 60, 60 and 60 !!

Average = 60

So Aerobic training would be 220 – 60 = 160

This would be a steady state HR range.

But Karvonen advocated the aerobic range to be say 60/80% of this so let’s use 70%

Therefore 112….experience shows this veers to CAUTION

Again looking at the known physiology of your athletes and the 220 HR max reduced in Swedish terms to 214…try this:

Average resting HR say trained 1,500m – 5km athlete is 50! X 80% [experience] = 40.

So Max Hr is 214 – 40 = 174.

This is the max. Recommended HR for Track based sessions.

The Steady state range is now 90% of this =

174 x 90% = 156.

And the Aerobic LSD run is 70% of Max HR =

174 x 70% = 122.

Is Coaching an ART or a SCIENCE

It should all be based on the thorough knowledge of the physiology of your athlete.

CVJ/ amended 13/12/2004. & revisited Spring 2011.

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Collapse Point Theories…Re-visited

About 40 years ago, the early 70’s to be precise, when top class athletes were churning out about 130 miles per week, there was a US Marathon record holder and coach Ken Young, who put forward this theory:

‘In simple terms ‘Collapse Point’ is the maximum distance a runner can expect to run before the urge to slow down overwhelms him’. Ken Young likened this to the wall in a marathon, further stating ‘The collapse point is characterised by a sudden decrease in performance, often occurring within a single mile, with pace dropping considerably’.

Ken was not advocating a ‘pure’ quality regime, but a clear exponent in the belief that all ‘distance’ events need a very solid aerobic, mileage build up base before they can commence a ‘true’ quality phase, specific to the event targeted.  So after a successful time/period of scheduled training you build up an appropriate aerobic base [miles in the bank].  Ken then put forward his ‘Collapse Point Theory’. Again his ballpark statement was ‘You will stop or slow down dramatically at a point about three times your average daily distance for the past 6-8 weeks [training]’.

He produced a table covering [in his opinion] the basic mileage requirements for race distances from 3 miles [5km] to 31 miles [approx 50km].  This is where the author takes slight journalistic leeway and summarises this for brevity reasons to examples covering 10km to Marathon, suggesting that this would be the level needed to be run for 8/9 weeks prior to the targeted race AFTER the successful aerobic build up phase. [please see later].

Weekly Total                  Collapse Point            Max. Race distance

20 miles                          9 miles                      10 km.

25m                        11m                   *8m [12.9km].

35m                        15m                   Half Mara.

65m                        28m                   Mara.

*  Included for the Cross Country specialist.

This is where we leave the ‘theory’ for a while.  Experiments with the original theory proved that it could and did work, but relied very heavily on an excellent coach/athlete relationship and trust, as many athletes would be reluctant to descend from what they perceive/d as an aerobic base necessary to see them through to their ‘target’.

Perhaps the psychological intervention comes in impressing upon athletes that they must become tuned psychologically to EVENT SPECIFIC training.  In simple terms 10km prospective Olympic athletes do not train for the Olympic Marathon [with apologies to Emil Zatopek and other exceptional ‘physiological’ athletes]. We must now revert to the QUALITY aspect of the needs of training for a specific event, with maybe a confidence boost to ‘trick’ the psychological block to the theory.  The actual ‘Collapse Point’ as proposed by Ken Young, now becomes the maximum suggested ‘over distance’ training run to be achieved at least once, maybe twice, duly periodised in the final 8/9 week build up to the target event. From the simple chart above, therefore, our marathon runner will run at considerably less than race pace a ‘long slow distance’ run of say 28 miles, probably at a heart-rate of max 156 bpm.

We now need to consider accepted ‘norms’ for the aerobic/anaerobic content of distance training. Let’s summarise briefly, dropping down to the 5km distance to illustrate better over a range of ‘target’ races:

5 km.            90% aerobic – 10% anaerobic

10 km.           95% aerobic -  5% anaerobic

Marathon.          99% aerobic – 1% anaerobic

Now bear in mind the need for event specific training, and the assumption is that you are a dedicated cross-country specialist, preparing for in good club runner terms the ‘Nationals’.  An amalgamation of these theories may indicate that in your final 8/9-week phase, you could be training very efficiently on say 30 miles per week, of which a maximum of 7.5% would be anaerobic.

This would probably include a mixture of pure aerobic running, linked to HR, grass/road reps and fartleks, with an occasional ‘time-trial’ thrown in.  Most athletes at this level would of course include a dedicated weekly track session [either self-coached or coach administered].  But what, if any, is the ideal amount of anaerobic effort required? Quite honestly, it may be only within a range of 3,600 to 5,000 metres of anaerobic work per week.

From experience, you will need to counter certain arguments/opposition to this/these theories, which in the final 8/9-week phase are truly ‘quality’ based training periodised sessions.  Let’s rehearse some of the ‘opposition’ theories.  ‘There is no substitute for mileage’  ‘The less is more concept is a ploy by populist running magazines to increase circulation’. ‘Music to the ears of cross-trainers, who do not like lonely nights on the road’.  ‘Low mileage to many is an inverse Atkins diet – run less to get faster’ [My acknowledgement to Peter Kellam for his contribution].

The author does not defend these arguments here, but is quite often heard to mutter to his own athletes ‘You can not run further until you can run faster!’  Athletes are individuals, and as such, especially at senior level, must be so coached. You [as the Coach] should have a thorough knowledge of their physiology, skill level/s, social and environmental conditions and of course their psychology.

This phase [periodisation] should rekindle the athlete’s appetite and be extremely motivational, following the patient aerobic build up.  Even if the athlete is a predominantly ‘slow twitch’ marathon runner, this principle still applies.  Weekly mileages can be maintained at approximately 60/65 miles per week, but with greater flexibility in the planned regime.  There will be a re-introduction of quality speed endurance, as opposed to ‘pure’ speed, bearing in mind the percentage requirements of the aerobic/anaerobic statement put forward previously.  These sessions can take many guises; fartleks, whistle sessions, time trials, disciplined track sessions and low key under distance races.  Within this 8/9 week revised Collapse Point theory, there must of course be a ‘taper’ prior to the target race, in the final 10 days.

Having achieved a ‘Personal Best’ at the target distance, does the process then re-commence? Well yes, after a short period of ‘active recovery’.  Let’s quote one of the leading distance coaches of the 20^th Century, Arthur Lydiard of New Zealand:  ‘You can’t race well the year round because your condition will only take you so far.  When you’re racing hard, you can’t train hard.  If you compromise, you can hold your form for 3 or 4 months. But [then] you’re going to have to go back and start to build again’.

The union of sports psychology linked to a solid aerobic base and to phased quality training, sounds like a marriage made in Heaven – give it a try!  With this balance in place, thoughts can then turn to tactics, now that’s another story………

Clive V James

UK Athletics Level 4 Performance Coach – rtd.

PG Dip [Sports Coaching]

March 2004. revisited Winter 2010.

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THE OBSESSION WITH DISTANCE

Some years ago the ‘marathon boom’ created runners moving up to the marathon distance who were obsessed with mega mileage, which included over race distance preparation and training at almost abnormal weekly loads. We all know and appreciate the benefits of well established coaching principles, based on that well known dog ‘FIDO’, namely FREQUENCY, INTENSITY, DURATION and OVERLOAD.

There are of course physiological reasons why some top class athletes can cope with say four marathons a year, most would easily manage two, probably as we move deeper into the 21^st century, the dedicated professionals; Paula Radcliffe, Paul Tergat, too many Kenyans, and Ethiopians to name, but note also that perhaps 90% of today’s top marathon runners are altitudinal, would certainly ‘plan’ two in a double periodised year, Olympic year maybe different.  But for the mere mortal, the good club runner, let’s get back to basics, and the three P’s should be uppermost in the athletes and coaches mind.  They are Planning for preparation and Preparing for peak performance, and ideally in a single Periodised year. Let’s say our athlete is competing in an April marathon i.e. London/Rotterdam etc.  His or her training year could be as follows:

May/June – Active Recovery      July, August & September – Strength & Speed Endurance

October – December – Aerobic Conditioning January – Active Recovery

February – April:    A max 9/12 week build up to event, with emphasis on oxygen transport efficiency through establishing required ‘cruising speed’.

Without being too technical let’s look at the components, which form our basic principles.

FREQUENCY: Our athlete needs to undertake at least 10/11 sessions/periods of work over a 7 day training regime, interspersed with REST, either total or active to limit the restraints on glycogen stores [please see later], i.e swimming, cycling, walking and recent inversion techniques.

INTENSITY: A balanced and varied schedule/regime is needed, mixing LSD – long slow runs [which need not be long! Suggested 4 miles to 22 miles] the pace at which run is important.

SS – Steady State [say 4 miles to 18 miles] again pace/heart rate determines, rule of thumb 30 secs.  per mile faster than LSD.

Fartlek: As name implies – speed play, but with a purpose.  Distance say 3 to 9 miles, with efforts either in metres, say 6 miles with 3 efforts of 300m, or in time, say 6 miles with 4 efforts at 60 secs, or by terrain. I.e. run the hills with a 100 metre run off, or on sand dunes, golf courses, beaches etc.

Specific Hills: Must be included for strength, but remember our target course must be relevant and training specific.  [London/Rotterdam are virtually flat courses] But, in all cases strength is a vital component for the marathon runner.  Two sessions which have proved beneficial, from experience, are;

A 3.2.1 session plus 800m to finish, say a 1 in 7 hill about 1,200 metres in length.  Warm up well, then up the hill hard for 3 minutes, jog down plus 30 secs recovery, repeat for 2 mins, then 1 minute, take a 4 minute jog recovery to a flat stretch of road and run a 800 metres at almost time trial speed, the whole session is sometimes doubled! – also a fairly gentle hill, and with appropriate recoveries run 3 x 5 x 22 secs.

Short Fast: Quite often used as time trials, from say 3 miles to 9 miles, as paced runs i.e. 5 miles at 10 km. race pace, used to develop cruising speed, in association with steady state runs, also vital as confidence builders.

Track Sessions: Even for our marathon runners, considered very important in developing speed endurance and strength endurance.  Quality sessions with long recoveries for speed and a mixture of short/long reps for strength with short recoveries. The trusted pyramid sessions with adjusted pace judgment are also vital.  Always remember ‘speed before fatigue’ therefore recoveries are extremely important.  The increased training effect on the heart occurs during the recovery period.

Road Reps: Same principles as track, but usually from one mile to 3 miles for strength, mental and cruise mentality orientated. i.e. 3 x 3 miles at 90% rpe [rate of perceived effort] with say 2 or 3 min. recoveries.

Time Trials: Must be realistic and specific, and according to the training period.

Multi Terrain: Fartlek or specific sessions on beaches, dunes, cross country etc.

Circuit Training: As appropriate for strength and assist mobility/flexibility.

Races: Under distance from say 5 Km to 20 miles, knowing your athlete, these can be considerable confidence boosters and provide the racing competitive edge.

DURATION: All the above comments relate; I would advocate peak mileage weeks of 90 to 100 miles, the key to success is quality coupled with confidence.  Until the 9/12-week build up phase, would only suggest maximum training runs of 18/20 miles and in some cases relate to ‘time on feet’ principles, as opposed to distance. i.e Run out and back for 2 hours.

Why do ‘good’ club athletes think they need mega mileage weeks? Is it for mental toughness, is it because of ‘star’ pressure [if it’s ok for Paula Radcliffe, its ok for me!!]. There is no solid physiological evidence to support it; in fact nutritional requirements would be very intense, as the athlete on high mileages is continually depleting his/her muscle glycogen supplies, with little chance of adequate replenishment.  Dietary and nutritional requirements/considerations are extremely important to our marathon runner. In this ‘Green’ world a key word is conservation; of both energy and muscle glycogen.

OVERLOAD: The athlete and his mind and body will only improve when they are ‘forced’ to operate beyond their accepted ‘norms’.  A training load must be progressively and gradually applied and increased to adapt the athlete to respond to the needs of the increased training to produce the increased training effect.

It can be applied and progressed in a number of ways.  Application can be to Frequency, Intensity and Duration.  Mention was earlier made of the contribution of the ‘mind’, and mental attitude is extremely important, coupled with the setting of realistic goals and thus expectations. Therefore the mental preparation is vital in any overload equation, as the nervous system of the athlete should be stimulated to respond positively and with excitement to the increased tasks he /she is asked to undertake.

A word of caution ‘Know when to stop’, as a Coach recognise and even study the physiological signs in an athlete, which in many cases maybe coupled with personality traits.  Monitor heart rates and weight loss/gain, assess mood swings.  Mental preparation is extremely important prior to applying OVERLOAD and at all stages must be relevant to the needs and ABILITY of the athlete.  Coach and Athlete must have a close and honest rapport.

SUMMARY:

The real key to achieving goals at the marathon distance is to establish and specifically train for the required ‘cruising speed’ of the event, through quality controlled sessions.  Thus by race day, bearing in mind the need for tactical consideration, the athlete can almost run on ‘auto-pilot’ for the 26 miles 385 yards.

Clive V James

UK Athletics Level 4 Performance Coach [with International Cert.] Rtd.

Post Grad. Diploma [Sports Coaching].

Revised 5^th October 2008 and Winter 2010.

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The Acquisition of Skill

Skill differs from technique which is basically interested in patterns of movement, whereas skill enters into other areas and could be described as the technique applied to the competitive situation.  A good technique in a training situation may not convert into a good skill in the competitive situation.

Coaches need to have knowledge of:

• the event and its technical demands
• the athlete’s capabilities and potential
• the techniques used by other successful athletes
• relevant and varied coaching progressions

There are many definitions of skill; in athletic terms it consists of the ability to bring about an end result with maximum certainty and minimum outlay of energy, or of time and energy, therefore the athlete seeks to achieve a well-defined goal by:

• maximising the achievement certainty
• minimising the physical/mental energy costs of the performance
• and minimising the time taken

There are three critical elements to the mastery of skill:

1. perceiving the relevant environmental features
2. deciding what/where and when to do it
3. producing organised muscular activity to generate movements

We must now classify skills, generally accepted that without being too complicated we should classify two classifications, quite simply open and closed:

1. Open – the environment is variable and unpredictable; in sports such as football,      wrestling, basketball and tennis.
2. Closed – the environment is stable and [fairly] predictable in sports such as archery, swimming, gymnastics and lane sprinting in athletics.

We do perhaps, for the purist, need to enlarge on these classifications just a little.  Skills can be discrete; easily defined, beginning and ending and of brief duration, the classic example would be the clean and jerk in weightlifting.  They can of course be continuous, with no particular beginning or end, and can of course last for a considerable time, examples would be long distance swimming, marathon running etc.

Other classifications could be grouped as Motor skills, involving quality of movement and subsequent decision of that motor skill action e.g.. Long and high jumps.  Not of too great importance [perhaps] to an athlete but we must not forget Cognitive skills, where decisions are critical, the classic example would be a chess or snooker player.  At this stage do not confuse cognitive skills with tactical consideration, that’s another story!

So what are the factors in acquiring skills?

There are five main categories, with in some cases sub divisions:

1. Arousal – coaches and advised athletes will be aware of the ‘inverted U principle’, basically increased arousal improves performance, but only to a point, after which any further increase in arousal would be seen to degrade performance. As coaches and athletes we have all observed the ‘over the top’ parent and it must be said that the same could apply to coaches.
2. Attention – is serial that is it shifts from source to source over time and is limited in capacity; it is effortful and directly related to arousal.  It can have a serious      effect on coordination, and can limit the capacity to perform certain parts of tasks together. Only the advanced coach/athlete would ‘mix’ technique and speed in the same coaching session, am particularly thinking of hurdle events.
3. Memory – simply the storage of results of various information and the process thereof.  This does need to be subdivided into Short Term Memory, which as the name implies is limited in capacity and held only as long as attention is directed to it.  E.g. centering.
4. Long Term Memory is the process of very well learned information gathering over time [ever tried to learn a language!]  Of course there is a process in place that allows a switch between STM to LTM either simultaneously or over time.
5. Visual skills are very important, one especially for football/rugby players is optical     flow, which provides for stability and balance leading to the ‘eye on the ball’ theories, also the vital need in some sports for visual dominance and visual capture e.g. The golfer who must keep his head still, concentrating on the ball, whilst he controls the rest of his/her body.  Top class Snooker players have a fine mastery of this skill.

To the disbeliever, it is always pertinent to show a short example of motor skills, by way of a simple limb test, using a well-known palindrome.  Ask your athlete to write ‘Able was I ere I saw Elba’, with his/her dominant hand, and time the action – also checking for quality.  Then ask them to repeat this with the non-dominant hand, time it and compare quality.  They could also try it with the pen in their mouth.  Why this test – well their memory is the same, the learned skill is not, it may even be non-existent.

In this brief summary on the acquisition of skill, as indicated above, we must consider the accuracy/quality aspect.  In technical terms, we are guided by Fitts Law, which states:

‘Movement time is linearly related to the index of movement difficulty’

Translated that means basically haste makes waste or usually faster is less accurate.  So we must balance newly acquired skills to effect a speed/accuracy trade off – in football terms, short passes are more accurate than long passes!

Finally and probably the most important aspect of all in skill acquisition, do not confuse Ability with Skill.  Ability could be genetic, and whilst certainly helping in acquiring skills must not be confused with skill.  Skill always comes with practice.

Clive V James

UK Athletics Level 4 Performance/International Coach. [Rtd]

PG Dip [Sports Coaching].

Sept. 2003. [revisited – Sept. 2010]

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