Key Note Speech:
If you want to be the best you need to organize your rest: Organising training to optimize performance.
Arran Peck - Strength and conditioning coach, Coach to the British Tennis Men’s team.
Introduction
The training science for physical adaptation and development in sports is well researched. The principles are still the same regardless of the sport; ‘The body is the body’, and applying the same rules to adaptations to the different sports and the different needs of that sport. Optimize the physical readiness of circus artists for a long and successful career as performers.
1)Principles of training from a sports scienceperspective that underpins physicaldevelopment
Non-negotiable rules to achieve adaptation:
We are not all created equal - Physical development; the rate and magnitude of changes is limited to genetics and training history. Extensive training can help improve but only to a certain point, limited often by genetics.
Law of Accommodation –Higher gains can be seen at the start of a training regime but if the same load is applied over time, then the gain plateaus, diminishing the returns.
Progressive overload - If providing a stimulus there will be a fatigue to that stimulus, there is going to be recovery, and by the end of that period ofrecovery there will be a higher level of performance. Over time fitness increases but must be a progressive overload. Trying to achieve too much too quickly normally results in insufficient recovery from the overload which can significantly compromise positive adaptation.
Law of reversibility – Regression is quicker than progression. By stop training you lose the gains you have made faster than it took to make the gains.
Law of specificity – The degree of transfer to performance is determined by the size, the rate direction of force applied.
General adaptation syndrome – Stimulus, fatigue, resistance, and adaptation follows a simple principle: Applying multiple stimuli over time, thena period of fatigue (which is determined by your genetics, training history and by the extent of overload) is followed by period of recovery which results inan over compensation adaptation (returning from recovery slightly faster, fitter and stronger than before).
2)Importance of recovery:
Studies show when stimulus is applied and given appropriate recovery time, and by repeating the cycle overtime, there is an incline in strength and improvement.
Super compensation/positive accumulation is when there is aplanned over reaching, to reach fatigue and train during that fatigue but the period of recovery is sufficiently long that the athlete comes back super strong and fast. This would be with a serial athlete or professional with long time training.
Too short a recovery or not enough load being applied can mean a lack of achievement.
By not recovering long enough can mean that the end result spirals down.
3)Examples of how to organize a session to optimize the recovery of your performance and pre and next performance:
Studies show that immediately after a training session the ability to generate force, the energy stores (or metabolic rate), mental and cognitive responses, and quality of muscle tissue are depleted and tired between 1 to 4 hours afterward and will then resume normality between 24 and 48 hours. In the ability to generate force, improvements can be seen 2 days following.
Training for students
When looking at scheduling sessions we must ask if it is optimal to schedule heavy training sessions one after the other and can it possibly be avoided.Is the potential of the student be realized if we don’t schedule intelligently?Scheduling practical sessions at start and/or end of day, or ideally early on all days might be a possible advantage for the training/recovery balance. Is it possible to disperse and break up heavy physical days with theory days?
The implication of the university environment and pressures of deadlines on physical performance is also important to consider. Adding other stresses pressure (cognitive stress) can affect performance. Stress of any type needs to be recognised and considered in programme design.
Professional artist
The professional artist may have to train around full time jobs and family or less than ideal working schedules - therefore try to train at start and/or end of days – long tiring days at work can be stressful and can affect and impair the trainingbenefits.
Touring professional artist
Often the professional has no access to support services and possibly little control over their schedule.Days off are usually travelling days – therefore shorten practice sessions as much as possible. Do key skills and retain intensity but don’t add volume.
Optimise the practical interventions –
- Sleep – power naps but be careful on how long and deep the nap is, can affect performance and safety.
- Cryotherapy – cold baths, cold-water immersion orcontrast from hot to cold temperatures.
- Compression garments.
- Soft tissue massage.
- Reflexology.
- Acute hydration and nutrition focus for immediate and long term needs. Anti oxidant supplementation – cherry juice/ beetroot juice
- Hypnosis.
Summary
By applying these principles of rest and recovery time, allows the body to recover and in turn improve strength, flexibility and durability to the performer. These blocks can be built upon.
Discussion and Q & A
Do you recommend cold baths are much more productive than hot? If you can’t have bath would a shower do? And how long?
-Through my own studies I have applied cryotherapy, getting athletes to do that, but now believe that it doesn’t need to be ice cold. If it is an acute swelling then yes, i.e. for a rugby player. If an athlete has wanted to do it or asked to do it then have let them, but from a physiological perspective,I don’t think it is necessarily giving them what they think it is. Definitely giving them a proper cool down, nutrition in a timely fashion, and proper stretching is essential, so if giving them a cold bath helps them, and they think it’s doing them some good, then that is fine.
The length of time will all depend on how cold the water is and what the reason for having the cold water is for. If it is for acute swelling it will be longer. Over the years more research has been done and has shown that doing a proper cool down after an activity is most important and if baths are used then the majority of the time it should be Warm/Cold rather than Hot/Freezing.
In regards to refueling and hydrating at the end of the day/training session what is better; plain water or water with some carbohydrate? Heard that 5% to 6% of sugar in water is best for rehydrating the body. Is there anything more up to date?
-What you are replacing will dependyou as an individual. There is no hard and fast rule or equation. A heavy or ’Salty’ sweater will need a higher concentration than lower, less ‘salty’ sweaters. Having an electrolyte solution is better than plain water but if you don’t have that then water is better than nothing. Hydration is the key.
There were graphs shown earlier showing post session recovery on strength and conditioning. What about Flexibility?
-How long it will take to achieve an adaptation will be dictated by anatomy, muscle, connective and soft tissue.
-If you don’t get measureable change in the session then you didn’t get change.
-Also over stretching in a session resolving in injury, means it will take longer to recover and going on a downward trend that was shown in the earlier charts.
-When it comes to stretching there is a lot of literature in the scientific world. Interesting work done in the States about how to improve mobility with the use of bands and other accessories. But in terms of getting an injury after a stretching session proves a problem because you can’t go back in to a stretching session and expect to get gains, if you are stretching tissue that is acutely traumatized or inflamed that stretching session will provoke an inflammatory reaction. Look at the objectives of your training session. Not wise to go about another training session if that area has not healed enough.
Experiencing the worst muscle pain will usually be two days later after training, why is that? In the past when it hurts that much the only way to get over it was to just do the same thing again.
-As a physical trainer have had to encourage people to push through. Nature of work is to disrupt tissue fibers and some of that is necessary. But it is your body trying to tell you that something is going on and if you are unable to get that same depth, your muscles are being challenged, so just pushing through isn’t always the best thing to do. The peak of recovery is around that period so pain won’t have necessarily gone by that point anyway.
-At the Dance UK conference and one of the presenters had just finished his PHD on stretching and found aggressive stretching causes inflammation on the cellular tissue level on the muscles. So if you did aggressive stretching back to back there will be an accumulation of inflammation. You need rest and recovery time. He found, looking past 72 hours, you could get the same results if you went to 30/40% of your perceived maximum range of motion than if going to 80/90% but there would be less tissue damage. In a long term scale your tissues will less scarred and less damaged. You want stretching more of a healing process.
-A really interesting book from Leatherman, who is a chiropractor, says that to increase your range of motion you either need to do massive amount of stretching or to implement the new range of motion directly in to your movements, changing your daily behaviors. If you want to increase hamstring flexibility, bending every day will increase that motion rather than just ten minutes a day of just stretching.
When you are looking at this session you are looking at strength and conditioning, but if you are in a technique class you are not pushing, would you do that in the days in between? Or would you still count that as a session?
-Even if you are doing a technique class there is still a lot of work going on. Hanging from a trapeze there is significant load going through the body, or hand balancing using wrists and shoulders. A lot of work is still being done. You want to minimize the over reaching process and maximize the recovery to improve your performance in the longer term.