You couldn’t use a better word: “down regulation”. Even if i don’t know what it exactly is, i feel this word is eloquent. :-)
I noticed this effect when trying to “taper” with a “shock”- intense day followed from some active recovery days. But, more than tired the athletes were looking not performant.(after i changed giving after the recovery days some days of “cns” activation).
I noticed also the same thing after 1 or 2 weeks of hard training , where the performance was rising from day to day. But, after the unload week the performance wasn’t good at all.
It seems that the body dynamics is quite slow.
But the question i was asking myself was : if i would have another heavy week instead of an unloading one, what would have happened ?
It would be interesting then to comment the shock loads,prescribed with the intent to have a “greater supercompensation” (Ben Johnsonn tapering for example, even if the squat and bench some days before would act like an activation tool) .
If performance was consistently rising,why did you “unload”? Where is the need of such a choice,other than tickling one’s self with vain training recipes set in stones on paper?
I do not quite understand what you mean here,but I would say quite the opposite is true: body dynamics are quite FAST (although we do our best to slow them down…)!
This was the right question to ask at that time.
Now is too late…
PS: Please PM me your contact details,as I do not have them anymore due to a crash in my laptop.
Forgive my ignorance- so I assume by the peripheral factors having an affect on recovery of the athlete you are refering to the recovery of the neuromuscular junction. How do you judge the level of disruption, fatigue, self-inhibition, recovery, etc. of the PNS?
If we find that deload periods are beneficial in keeping athletes fresh and in a position to progress over the long term by avoiding any overreaching that may occur as a result of prolonged high intensity training but cause a down-regulation of the CNS by virtue of a lack of stimulation (with the issue of the importance of the PNS having been stressed) what do you think about a decrease in training volume with a slight decrease in intensity along with an increase in volume and/or intensity of a more general high intensity means? For instance, in the training of a sprinter- one would reduce the volume of sprints and squats with a slight decrease in intensity as well while increasing the volume and intensity of the bench press. This athlete receives lower overall stress to the nervous system and the specific muscles which are most highly stressed during training (feet, legs, glutes, etc) also get a break (importance of PNS) while the bench press provides stimulation in order to avoid the downregulation that comes with an off or “traditional” deload week- similar in nature to Charlie’s use of the bench press in a taper prior to an important competition.
If an athlete is progressing over the long term,why the need to take care of CNS down regulation,or even cause it by de-loading? The ever increasing stimuli of the progression itself will keep the CNS well ready for the task.
What about the short-term? Even in the most specialised plans there is such a strategy before an important race, no? Unless this isn’t why it’s done and/or you mean something else. Thanks!
How do you know the athlete is progressing “over the longer term”?
Monitoring can only tell you he’s progressing up to now. Longer term progress requires some load or stress variability BEFORE you hit a limitation which may require a much more extensive down period than would be the case if preventative variability was practiced.
As intensification is the training goal (higher results), and, since intensification is not linear, each step up yields a new and potentially unpredictable response until it is already upon you, why not give yourself some “breathing room” to respond before the situation becomes dire?
Yes, I recently ran into this problem with my athlete. We dug ourselves into a hole because training was yielding improving times. But since we did not allow for some margin of error (“breathing room”), once we got into the competitive season, the athlete in question was running sub-par times and complaining of poor fitness. We had to give him 2-3 weeks of little to no work, and he finally starting running the times we had predicted.
It’s similar to playing at the blackjack table. You can win hand after hand, but sooner or later, your luck will change. But it is difficult to tell if you need to “hold up or fold up”. It’s better to walk away from the table with some winnings, than lose it all because your luck ran out.
I undertsood and meant that by “long term” we were referring to the past until now,not to the term yet to come.
IF predictability can only be potential,then the “breathing room” becomes a must.But:can we make predictability a sure thing in training?
To me only at that point we can begin talking about training “science”…
It is precisely because we can’t make predictability a sure thing that we allow a down period. We know for sure that it is better to undertrain than overtrain.
That down period must, due to this lack of certain knowledge, be slightly longer than is truly necessary (leading to at least some undertraining).
We can take a stab at “safety tables” for downtime based on performance levels and time into the training period.
Anyone care to start with suggestions??
Because you don’t know the max limit and you will be in trouble if you go over it, you have a larger arbitrary down/recovery period there than you actually need in order to be safe. The difference between what you have and what you actually need is the degree of undertraining from this element.
I assume that as performance level rises the ability to tax onself maximally increaes (see performance improvement graphs on Van’02 dvd). Therefore, it would make sense that one will need slightly more time to recover between maximal exertion.
As for time into training period (I assume we mean week1/12 of SPP vs week 10/12) classically the ratio of down to up would increase as we approach competition and ability to perform maximally starts to reach a peak. I know several world class sprint coaches who have used this tactic and produced world records in the process.
For example 10 week SPP, 1 week Taper:
1 - Up
2 - Up
3 - Up
4 - Down
5 - UP
6 - Up
7 - Down
8 - Up
9 - Down
10 - Up
11 - Taper
Based on what I have been told by the retrospective coaches you can either adjust volume or intensity. In the case of the world record holder i was talking about they adjusted volume but kept intensity the same. (p.s. I’m not going to name the athelte because it itsn’t my information to give but if you want i can show you my notes on the topic off the board.)
Obviously you are getting at a paradigm shift in thinking on this topic and as soon as I understand i’ll chime in with my thoughts (i’m still reading that book) but for now i have to discuss what i do know.
Doesn’t part of the adpatation process require periods of depletion (overreaching) in order to trigger new levels of progression. If your athlete hadn’t ever experienced that slump you might have never achieved your desired goal. What matters though is that you goal was reached.
Some coaches use the term “delayed transformation” or “Long Term Delayed Training Effect.” Viru states
“There are limits to the adaptation of the organism to training and the adaptation capacity has to be restored by relative recoveries…The more the organism is exhausted during the stages of large training volumes, the better are the super-compensation results.”
