Specific Intensity For Peaking: Is Race Pace The Best Option?

The relationship between the principles of training and physiological adaptations has a significant impact on performance. Many factors need to be addressed in a training program to make it a successful one for a particular athlete and thus improve their performance.

The weather is perfect for racing: not too hot, not too humid, not too windy. I dash down the twisted trails in the woods, trying not to stumble on the gnarled roots protruding from the dirt. My spikes puncture the soft earth with every stride, and my legs repeatedly pound on the ground, soreness surging through them. As sweat trickles down my face and dirt smears across my aching calves, I ascend a steep hill, trying to bring forth the strength I have accumulated throughout endless hours of practice. Now that I am nearing the final two hundred meters, I must force my body to begin sprinting. Breathing heavily, I dart for the imminent finish line, trying to beat the uninterrupted tick of the timer. Even though the crowd surrounds all around me, I can barely hear their animated cheers, because all I can focus on is crossing the line before the girl next to me. I can feel adrenaline surging through my body, and I widen my stride to cap off the remaining distance. When I glance at my Garmin watch, a new personal best time flashes across the screen. I realize that all of the gruelling work I have put in is worth the final result: happiness. (Snapshot Lead)

Of the more than twenty million Americans who are running today, most who start do so for the wrong reasons, with the wrong attitude, and tend to lose interest after a few weeks or months. Many quit. This is usually because they become concerned with superficial goals such as time and distance and never discover the more profound mental benefits that running offers. (Lilliefors 15)

A common adverse affect of overtraining for an elite athlete is ‘Overtraining Syndrome’. Overtraining syndrome is a neuroendocrine (neural input cells in the brain) disorder characterized by poor performance in competition, inability to maintain training loads, persistent fatigue, frequent illness, disturbed sleep and the most frequent in an elite athlete: alterations in mood state (Nature Immunology and Cell Biology Laurel T Mackinnon May 2000). Nearly all athletes experience the mood deterioration observed without impairment in sport performance. Since the goal is to reach a point of improved performance within the athlete the athlete then has to reach his/her limits of physical capacity (or even beyond) and since the balance between the right amount of training and overtraining is a fragile line many athletes suffer from this overtraining syndrome. It is not the hard training that makes you stronger in fact it makes you slightly weaker, it is the rest that will allow your body to grow stronger. Physiologic improvement in sports only occurs during the rest period following hard training. Due to this need for hardened training many elite athletes overwork themselves

In The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell, the tone clearly drives the strategy to be logos. Logos is an exceptional rhetorical strategy as it persuades the reader, not through the use of emotions and feelings, but rather through the use of logic and reasoning. There exists an energy in the style in which Gladwell writes that has the power to persuade the audience to believe what he believes in, the Tipping Point. Gladwell does not only give us his theory on how epidemics spread, but uses logos to connect the world we live in to his theory. The author’s use of logos results in a greater impact of the rhetoric.

Before camp, I typically ran four or five miles on the days without a practice, but thanks to the training I received there, I now know how to schedule my workouts to best achieve success. Nowadays, my typical training week includes a long run, a tempo run, two scheduled practices with my team, an easy run, and a day off before a cross-country meet. I also learned what these different types of runs do. For instance, jogging over a long distance allows muscle cells to recruit mitochondria, which improves aerobic respiration, while a tempo run – running quickly for a short period of time – “flushes” the lactic acid caused by the repetitive motion of the long run. Running at

All athletes regardless of age, gender, genetics or sport can benefit from effective training. It is important that the selected training improves the body’s ability to perform tasks associated with the chosen

4) How would you relate “the law of the few” to a transition management team?

In the study conducted by Edward H Robinson and Jeffrey R Stout, the use of one weekly interval session at vVO₂max led to a 3% improvement in vVO₂max and a 6% improvement in running(4).The interval duration was set to be 50% of the individual time that the athletes could sustain vVO₂max (the time that VO₂max can be sustained is called tlimvVO₂max or Tmax) which averaged around 3 minutes. The optimum length of VO₂max intervals is not clear although positive results have been found with a range of different interval lengths from 30 seconds up to 3-4

We only ran one trial of continuous and intermittent so we have limited data to work with. Participants acted as their own control, and even though a 20-minute rest was allowed in between exercise bouts fatigue will have an effect. We know this because whichever exercise participants performed seconds they could not exercise for as long. We did not separate the trained from untrained and it is possible that fitness level could affect recovery time. So we can assume that those who were able to recovery quicker had a greater rest period, and were therefore able to exercise for longer and generate more work regardless of what bout they performed second. This would have impactions in our final discovery, and with no control group or multiple trials we cannot be sure of the

Each athlete has an ideal of training that leads to maximum performance, if not carefully monitored it would lead into a state of consistent fatigue and underperformance (Raedeke, 1997). According to previous research, there are three major causes of overtraining; Lehman suggested that two of the biggest reasons that lead to overtraining are training monotony and the increase of training loads (Wiart, 2010). The third cause is inadequate recovery; Richardson (2008) suggested that looking at monitoring overtraining from a recovery approach may give a better understanding of stress/recovery imbalances in athletes.

Ruth (30’s) and James (50’s) plan on running the Great North Run, their different training regiments giving different physiological states during the run. I will explore how each runner’s training will affect these physiological states and what implications these states will have on the runner.

It was the afternoon of the Tri-County League Championship, or, as Coach Harkins called it, TCLs. Despite the usual mixture of sweat, puke, and sulfur in the air of Reggie Lewis Track and Athletic Center, there was an air of exhilaration. Everyone was excited because we got to leave school at 12:45 and we had practiced all week on the new track for this. My event, the 55 meter dash, was one of the first events. As I was warming up with the other sprinter on my team, I couldn’t help but feel nervous. That day was my last chance to qualify for states, and I needed to shave almost a tenth of a second off of my time.

Implementing cross training modalities as a form of injury prevention is a common practice among endurance runners. Lower extremity injury rates among runners have been observed at rates between 19.4% and 79.3% annually, specifically categorized as chronic overuse injuries (van Gent, et al., 2007; Hoeberigs, J.H., 1992). Additionally, it is suggested that approximately 60% of chronic injuries can be attributed to increasing training volume too suddenly (Hreljac, 2004). It has been thought that multiple different cross training modalities can be a reasonable low-impact substitute of aerobic exercise (Burns, & Lauder, 2001; Lu, Chien and Chen, 2007; Kilding, Scott, and Mullineax, 2007). Many methods of cross training have been used as a substitute to running, including elliptical exercise (EE), deep water running (DWR), swimming, and stationary cycling (Foster et al., 1995; Lu et al., 2007; Pizza et al., 1995; Sozen, 2010). When coaches and rehabilitation specialists prescribe certain forms of cross training, many factors must be considered when deciding which will be most beneficial. The specificity of training principles suggests that relevant activities should be done in order to gain results in the primary activity. Cross training is an activity that is used to improve the performance of one sport by training in an additional one, contrary to what the specificity principle would imply for preferred practices (Kilding, Scott, & Mullineaux, 2007; Masumoto, Bryon, & Mercer,

What can one consider being a tipping point in a situation. Is it when a situation changes from bad to worse? Could it be when it changes from good to better? Or could it be from when it changes from a bad situation and all of a sudden it turns around and becomes good? In my essay we are going to explore the tipping point from four different authors: Malcolm Gladwell, Mary G. King, Lynne M. Anderson, and Christine M. Pearson. From subject of: hush puppies, teen suicide, crime, smoking, incivility in the workplace and the black women’s breakthrough into clerical work. There could be many reasons why there were tipping