What does “work capacity” mean & what is meant by increasing an athletes work capacity?
This is physiological term, so take any physiological book for explanation… Work capacity is ability to do work (something like endurance). It is based on improved functional capacityes (aerobic, lactic, alactatic). It is hard to say anything more, because it is used between physiologists and not coaches…
It’s you capacity to handle work, or your conditioning level. It can be measured in several ways, but it’s all how you or your coach see it.
kac, measured in what ways?
pg 455 supertraining “shtanga functional pressure test” pretty much takes blood pressure tests b4 an after training an can tell if ones ready to train? has anyone have experience with this work capacity test?
Capacity (or ability) to handle some motor task, should be judged only on performance, not some physiological variables (VO2max, bLA, HR) etc…
Forget about tests, look at the performance (as Charlie stated)
In physiological books work capacity is sinonim to VO2max. So according to them (physiologists) having high VO2max means automaticaly that you have great working capacity (whatever it may be)
I always was under the impression one of the goals of the GPP phase was to increase an athletes work capacity so as one can handle the rigors of the SPP phase an its increased intensity. Now i always thought how does one measure or “know” if you have increased (&by how much) their work capacity. what is ment by look at their “performance”? how they did during a test week? isnt that more of a measure of their speed/power? or is it really through the subjective opinion of the coach & his program that the athletes work capacity is adequate/gaining,etc?
thanx
Ability to handle a particular amount of training long term. Increasing it allows you to follow a harder training programme without getting overtrained.
Doesn’t automatically relate to how you perform on one day (though often people who can produce a good race performance also have good work capacity). Anyone can do 150 miles in a day on a (decent) bike. Some people can do 1000 miles in a week on a bike. Not very many people can do 1000 miles a week, for 10 weeks. So someone who can do 1000 miles a week for 10 weeks has very good work capacity; someone who does 300 miles in a day as a one-off probably has good work capacity, but you don’t have enough information to know.
Knowing that most of the “good” athletes in high school track are often called on to run multiple events (for example, a strong 100m runner might be asked to also run the 200m and 400m or take up the long jump as well), would increasing work capacity be an important part of the training of a relatively untrained high school athlete, since it is not possible to specialize in all of the events at the same time?