Don’t know. I am just starting to explore this theory.
Duxx
I hope all is well…still no luck with USA travel/work plans…
by the way, who is your avatar?
I’ve been meaning to ask you this for quite some time!
It’s Nikola Tesla.
If you will accept my advice, start with a biology book. You need to understand the basics , gene expression , the road from gene to protein -> genotype to phenotype and so on …
Devils,
No luck so far 
I am pretty buisy here dealing with tennis players and just last night I got an offer to get to my old job, soccer… I am just deciding…
Its Nikola Tesla, famous serbian scientist and the guy who is responsible for the electricity you now enjoy and a lot of other discoveries that make our life they way they are now.
Dan,
I am familiar with it somehow, but I don’t want to go into the matter in depth. I don’t have time, nor will nor it is going to affect my system in pracitce in some greater degress. The theory is sound…
Yes, it has no impact whatsoever for practice.
This brings us back to the topic that we have already discussed somewhere in forum: you don’t need to know thermodynamics of engine to be a good driver (coach), only how does it respond (as a complex system) to different stimuli under different conditions. This may lead to development of coach-specific terms (like CF’s CNS fatigue, adaptation stiffness, etc) that descibe this behaviour of complex input-output system in more qualitative terms (without knowing its complex structure and isolate part functioning), which is in line with the fact that training is more an art than it is exact science.
Then “Adaptation in sports training”. is what you want to read.
the analogy with a driver is a bit flawed in my humble opinion. You, as a coach, are the engineer which builds the engine. This is a very significant difference. While no engineer is required to hold PhD in physics, elementary notions will help to build that engine and deliver the horse-power. And another thing, “over-analyzing” is for scientists. Engineers prefer to build.
Anything you can learn which will eventually translate into an practical advantage in the field is useful.
IMO Henk Kraaijenhof has a very lucid vision on coaching. I like him a lot.
I agree Dan.
Mladen, I think that you will find, as time moves forward, that you will, out of necessity, take a greater interest in studying the relevant sciences associated with sport training as you will familiarize yourself much more rapidly with the practical aspects of coaching/training athletes and their programming than you will with deeply understanding the associated sciences.
I know that I, for one, make it my directive to continue to develop, at the very least, a working understanding of the sciences in order that I may converse with experts in various fields other than my own in order to further my own capacity to more effectively train my athletes.
It’s an interesting thing because if we consider the saying “jack of all trades, master of none” we realize that our trade, as coaches of physical preparation, is far from a singular undertaking.
meaning, we must develop a high level multi-lateral understanding of many subjects in order to excel at our trade.
With a few caveats. If I had a classic sport science education before I started coaching, I would have ‘known’ right off the bat that much of what I developed couldn’t work.
And this only further supports my claim that such an education here in the west is likely to have this exact impact upon the coaching development of those with exercise science/physiology degrees.
The problem is what is taught- not hard science, as you well know Charlie your methods are well supported and rooted in physiological circumstance.
It’s not the concept of education in this field that is flawed, but the reality of it’s practice in academia by professors who spend their careers battling the fight against obesity and cardiac rehab as opposed to instructing the factors leading to improved human performance in sport.
I feel fortunate to have studied music in college and to have, and continue to develop my understanding of sport science via my personal selection of literature that is not slave to the opinion of some western professor whose knowledge of meaningful sport science is about as useful as Chlamydia.
Charlie I’m sure you would agree that if you were to couple the formal study of physiology, biomechanics, cell biology, and so on that is required to get the letters, with your practical knowledge and experience that you would make quite the professor who would, in turn, positively impact the careers of a myriad of students.
this is the type of professor that I would have enjoyed studying under, however, we can all be quite assured that none, or very few, of this caliber can be found in an exercise science/physiology department in North America.
I remember seeing where you got your degree in jazz guitar righ. If so that’s awesome. My personal favorite music - jazz, soul, funk.
Who’s your favorite players?
For me it’s Benson, Rodney Jones, and not a guitarist - Herbie Hancock.
please don’t go OT
As Lofti Zadeh said, and this is my favourite quote: “As complexity rises, precise statements lose meaning and meaningful statements lose precision!”. This guy developed Fuzzy Logic (which is based on vagueness, instead on true/false idea of binary logic). This is especially true for complex system like human body. You can’t explain its behaviour by studiing cells or any other individual part. Still, basing our decisions on individual parts knowledge is flawed in first place cause this knowledge is still low.
Dan, I would say that ‘the engine is already built’, you just need to tweak it here and there. There are great coaches that don’t know jack s*it about physiology, but they are awesome. Yes it is helpfull, but it can be limiting too. ‘Don’ lose sight of the forest for the trees’
Mladen, I appreciate the point that you are making; however, I would encourage you to not pick and chose the words or findings of others, such as Zadeh, that suit your argument as, by virtue of Newton’s 3rd Law, we know that a counter argument exists and at an equally justifiable status via the findings of others who share alternative viewpoints.
Instead, I would encourage you to acknowledge the fact that science provides us with much of our vocabulary and fundamental basis for understanding training effects, the human organism, and ultimately provides us with the framework from which to formulate the training in such an organized manner that yields consistency, reliability, and to an extent predictability.
I’m not sure that any meaningful discussions would ever occur on this message board if the more accomplished users had no knowledge of one form of science or another.
Alternatively, I would not discount the artistic and intuitive element of the coaching practice and to this end, by virtue of my formal and accredited field of study, I am as qualified to speak to this topic as anyone.
Perhaps we will all agree that coaching/training athletes is as much of a science as it is an art and as much of an art as it is a science.
The problem with quotes is that they are just that … quotes.
Mladen, I would not let anyone touch the engine from my Audi to tweak it. No offense, but maybe there are others which will let you tweak their engine and so you gain the knowledge to operate and modify it in reasonable bounds by trial and error, but not me.
Besides, you are the driver =)
If one would follow the line of reasoning you presented (regarding complex systems and their parts), medicine would be today still at the stage where shamans would dance around a fire in ER rooms in hospitals.
James summed it up pretty good. And that Dan’s dancing shamman in ER was pretty damn good
Has anyone been able to order the new book by Issurin? The UAC site does not seem to be working?
James how was the seminar this weekend? Will the DVD that is being made build on the other DVD you currently have out?
Seminar went very well in my estimation and based upon feedback from the attendees.
My presentation was, as were almost all of the other presentations, largely based off of an initial blueprint that was shaped by questions from the audience.
I went over my concept of physical preparation, the block, complex-parallel, and linear/western approach, as well as many tangents that were inspired by questions from the audience.
So long as the editing process goes well my goal is to have the DVD available in the next 30-40 days.