In the context of Olympic Weightlifting, a well-designed training program will provide the athlete with guidance on how to structure training across the week and make suitable changes to this structure on a weekly basis in the lead up to a competition. A really neatly prepared and well thought out training program can have a positive effect on the athlete. It reduces the likelihood of common issues that occur when athletes follow very loose training guidelines or none at all. Here are a few of the issues that a well-designed training program should minimise:
- Spending far too much time on exercises preferred by the athlete, and little or no time on exercises not preferred but often most needed.
- Going too heavy too often, which results in loss of form and well-being, and the occurrence of injuries.
- Failing to vary the training load sufficiently from day to day
- Performing exercises in an unhelpful order
- Using time poorly during training sessions
But training programs also have significant limitations and without sufficient understanding of these limitations athletes can be disadvantaged.
Pushing beyond planned percentages is an absolute necessity in the training processes but it must be done with a great deal of care and control. The training program, no matter how thoughtfully designed, can never predict the state of well-being of the athlete on any given day. For this reason, the work prescribed by the training program has to be subdued, respectful of the athlete's physical and emotional health and not too ambitious in its goals. The written training program with its specification of exercises, sets, reps and intensities can never be regarded as anything more than a broad framework for guiding the athlete.
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For the athlete in Weightlifting, the final 2 weeks before a major competition is a difficult period in which athletes often have a tendency to conjure up all manner of self-imposed roadblocks, issues and limitations. The anxiety produced by the impending competition sets off questioning thoughts about the need for more technical and strength work, and to continue training hard to the last moment. It's a kind of investment protection issue. The athlete may conclude that they just need to invest more energy and effort in training so as to protect what they have already invested so far.
Surprisingly, the timing of the last maximal session before competition day seems to vary considerably as a result of different belief systems of coaches and athletes. The variance will likely be between 7-21 days before a major competition. Why such a difference in beliefs should exist is a question worth asking but is not the subject matter of this article. Instead, this article attempts to address the anxiety issue that many athletes suffer.
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It's 4:00am, the day after an important local event and my mind is too active to sleep. I arrived home yesterday after a 14 hour day of coaching and organising the State Championships in the sport in which I have devoted nearly half a century of life - Weightlifting. Sitting by the home fireplace, I began at last to read and digest the many messages received from competitors, some excited by their performance and some desperately upset. Some messages are easy to answer, some will have to wait as the needed communication is challenging and requires careful consideration.
This is the usual situation.
Striving for excellence has always been a modus operandi for me. There is always something more to learn, something more to achieve. However, an important part of going forward to is to reflect upon one's past, the successes, the failures, the pivotal moments, the opportunities won and lost. Such reflections, h
owever, often occur at an unseemly hour of the day, hence here I am, before dawn, writing this post.
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The task for the athlete and the coach is to work together to continually improve the training process of the athlete over many years. It is highly probable that when this continuous improvement process comes to a halt, the athlete will no longer improve.
From day 1 in the training process, the athlete learns
how to train to develop good technique and athletic ability so as to improve results. Initially the learning is fast but as the months and years go by, the rate of learning slows as a result of fewer opportunities to learn something new, or perhaps incorrect assumptions that all the knowledge needed has been learned. To make further improvement then, the athlete and coach must work harder to find solutions to the perfection of the training problem.
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I was recently asked "what are the advantages and disadvantages/risks of adding an additional training session per week". I am sure that readers will attest that this is a common question in some form or another.
In any club that caters for differing levels of experience and ability, it is likely that there are athletes training as little as 2 days a week and as much as as 6 days per week, and some even 9-11 sessions per week. At every level of experience, it is probable that athletes will ask the question 'should I be doing more?'
The simple answer is of course that it depends on the 'circumstances of the individual athlete' but an answer of this nature does not really help. What's really needed is a number of criteria that the athlete and the coach can consider to determine whether circumstances permit an additional training day.
Here are some suggested criteria for increasing training frequency:
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Coaches must be aware that the initial learning period of the beginner in Weightlifting is profoundly important and will leave an indelible impression. In the case of coaching children and/or young adults, there is an increased level of responsibility to ensure that the coaching methodology employed lives up to community expectations and provides the beginner with a good start to their career in the sport.
The following guidelines are provided to assist coaches working with children and young adults in Weightlifting:
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In the final days/weeks before a competition, athletes and coaches will generally discuss and make decisions about the athlete's "competition plan". This process can be quite simple or very elaborate depending on the importance of the competition, the level of experience of the athlete, and whether there is any need for tactics to respond to the athlete's competitors. Read More
To my athletes, I would like to take a moment of your time to explain how I might see things differently about training, your training.
Last night was a designated 'heavy' session. I know that you very much look forward to such sessions in the hope that you can push beyond your present personal bests. Last night, many of you were rewarded for your efforts. Well done!
But as we head towards the next competition, there are some things I want you to keep uppermost in your mind. Read More
Nature versus Nurture in Weightlifting
It is accepted theory in Weightlifting that genetics plays a substantial role in the ultimate performance of the individual (12, 33). A typical belief is that Weightlifters of the highest performance levels have a greater ratio of fast-twitch to slow-twitch fibres (29). Similarly, a common opinion in the Weightlifting community is that certain anthropometric characteristics strongly influence success such as shoulder circumference (38) and shorter height and limb lengths (34). Furthermore, many researchers have found that Weightlifters as a group are amongst the most mesomorphic of all athletes (25).
Figure 1: Relative contribution of nature (natural ability) and nurture (influence of environment) on success in Weightlifting
However, environmental factors also play a highly significant role in success in Weightlifting. These factors include the coach’s leadership skills (8), the coach’s knowledge and effectiveness (7), the culture within the training environment (22) and the degree to which the athlete develops a sense of belonging or relatedness to their sport and their training colleagues (30). These factors will affect the motivation of the athlete to pursue training over the many years of deliberate practise (10) at increasingly higher levels of commitment needed to attain high performance. Furthermore, environmental factors will impact on the athlete’s ability to cope with the psychological pressures of extreme heaviness in critical moments in competition and training.
For these reasons, success in Weightlifting should not be considered as predominantly dependent on genetics as is a popular view, but instead on a relatively equal contribution of genetics and environment as portrayed in Figure 1 above.
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