OVERSPEED
TRAINING- THE MOST EFFECTIVE METHOD FOR TRAINING THE MOST
VALUABLE PHYSICAL QUALITIES IN OUR ATHLETES
by
Prof. Angel Spassov, Ph.D. D.Sc.
and
Tony Capasso |
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The
ultimate goal of top experts and athletes around the world is to organize the
training process to be as close as possible to the competitive effort and even
to a level beyond that. Reaching those levels is possible in two ways: The most
natural is to put the athletes in the company of strong rivals as this
transforms each drill into a furious competition. The other way is more
interesting for coaches, experts, and athletes because it involves raising the
talent level in a situation where there is an absence of strong rivalry. In
these cases the athletes improve mostly because of the system of training, as
they don’t have the luxury of the natural selection that comes from the strong
competitiveness of even level athletes. Putting athletes in the company of
strong rivals is applied much more often in countries with larger populations,
and systematic training is preferred by smaller nations because they suffer from
a smaller number of talents to choose from. Lets take an example from the two
most popular sports in the world – soccer and track & filed. Our statement
that these are the most popular is based on the fact that the world’s
federations of these sports are the largest international organizations ever.
With more than 200 member countries, they are larger than International Olympic
Committee or even the United Nations.
In the sport of soccer, the
greatest amount of success in the World Cups and Olympic Games has been achieved
by the largest countries (from 60 to 165 million population), like Italy,
Germany or Brazil. On the other hand, great achievements have also been realized
by smaller countries (less than 30 million population), like Argentina, Uruguay,
Holland, Hungary for the men’s soccer). On the women’s side were successful
large countries like USA (285 million), China (1.25 billion) or relatively small
countries, like Sweden (8 million) or Norway (4 million). These examples confirm
that larger countries can rely on the number of talents, when the smaller ones
don’t have that luxury and they have to find a way to compensate for that
smaller number. The truth is that experts need to study both ways, because the
clubs, the universities and even the high schools are pretty much in the
situation of the smaller countries – they have to deal with a lot of clubs and
schools, who want to recruit the best talents. Therefore, we do not only have to
recruit and chase the best talents, but at the same time we have to produce and
develop them. The level and competitiveness at these soccer tournaments is
getting so high and the number of talents less and less for such a level so the
only way to provide a constant flow of good players is a well structured system
all the way from beginners to top-level international players.
In the sport of track & field,
for example, sprinters of the USA are good because if you want to reach the
international level you have to overcome large numbers of excellent sprinters
and those who survive such strong competition will be great. In the1968 Olympic
Trials in Eugine, Oregon – the best European sprinter, Roje Bambuke from
France, broke the European record, and still only qualified 28th.
That day the first three finishers, all Americans, ran for the first time in the
world, a 100 m dash under 10 seconds. In this case the major reason for such
domination is the size of the American nation and the fact sprit is a popular
event in this country. In other words the atmosphere allows the American coaches
acquire great experience in work with the sprinters. On the other hand sprinters
from smaller countries or counties where it is not as popular as it is in
America, they are also able to win the highest possible awards at the World
Championships and Olympic Games. In the modern era the Italian sprinter Pietro
Mennea hold the World record in 200 m dash for almost 20 years and won the
Olympic games, coming from a country which doesn’t have any traditions in the
sprints. 1972 the Soviet sprinter Valeri Borsov, shocked the world, winning 100
and 200 m dash in the Olympics. The same did Haizly Crawford from Trinidad &
Tobago, in 1976, winning the Montreal Olympics in 100 m dash. All of them are
examples for brilliant set up and execution of system of training and
preparation. Other examples are the distance runners form East Africa, like
Kenya or Ethiopia, where every workout is a survival of the limits of the speed
that they can handle. That’s why every major international track event
contains their strong presence and they play a major part in the placements and
rankings between the top runners. In the absence of large numbers and strong
competition a system of training is important in the development of athletes.
Roger Bannister is an example of improvement through a system of
training. In 1954 he was the first
to break the 4 min barrier in the 1 mile run.
He achieved this by cutting the mile into pieces of 100 m, 200 m, and 400
m and then running those pieces in his training.
As he improved his times in those pieces he began to improve his time in
the 1600 m distance of that event. They are the product of a systematic approach
to training that enables them to develop the talents that they have available.
Then
you have a situation like the Dream Team of basketball that wins the Olympic
games effortlessly because of the exclusive competitiveness of the NBA. Next to
them we can put the wonderful soccer players from South America, whose magical
skills are reason for tearful joy for the fans. With this brilliant technique
they have won half of the World Cups for men and when they don’t it is not a
matter of skills, but a matter of organization and other non-soccer factors. All
these cases just show there is a large variety for the way athletes can get to
the top. But looks like all individual cases on base of clubs and schools most
of all need a system to transfer a good athlete into an excellent one.
It is wonderful when you have case
where there are a number of good athletes in each event. In this case the coach
enjoys the limitless intensity that each one of them demonstrates. There is no
doubt that he who survives this training environment will be great. You may ask,
but who has the greatest potential in the group? Maybe with another system
someone else could reach higher results. Even unanswered, this competitive
situation is the reason many potential talents are lost in the early stages,
but, who cares when we have the champion? However, in such high level of sport
today it is well understood that very rarely do we have the luxury of such an
abundance of talent.
Most coaches, with a great deal of
effort, try to develop the athletes they have in their hands to the highest
possible level. In this case, the most important task for the system is to
develop the natural physical qualities
of the athletes to the highest possible level. There are five major qualities:
speed, agility, strength, endurance and flexibility. The most important of them
all are speed and agility. We will take the risk to say that lately agility is
even more important than speed for most sports and especially the ball games,
such as soccer, basketball, volleyball, tennis, baseball, ice and field hockey,
team handball and so on. The
fact is that the best ball player is not the fastest on the team, not the
strongest, and not the one who has the best endurance or flexibility, but rather
the one who can apply these qualities in the most effective way according to the
game situation.
The most best and most
common way to train athletes is to make their practice as close as possible to
the competition. This doesn’t mean only with respect to energy and time but
also to intensity. Intensity is the
most manageable from a scientific point of view rather than volume because to
determine the cutting edge amount work done (volume) it is necessary to apply a
number of complicated tests. Blood analysis is one way to figure out the lactic
acid level which is a good indicator of the state of our athlete on any
particular day. At the same time, intensity is easier to control because the
organism of the athletes, age 12-25, can completely recover from stressful
intensity practice after a minimum of 7 days. This is the base of overspeed
training.
What
is overspeed? OverSpeed is when
athletes move the whole body, or parts of the body, with speeds higher than the
competitive speed. Even now when sprinters, the synonyms of speed, train they
mostly try to run pieces of 30-50 yd. During this kind of practice, they usually
accelerate to gaining the maximum speed possible and then try to maintain this
speed for the distance mentioned above. In other words, they try to maintain the
highest possible speed for as long as it is possible.
In doing this, they try to extend the barrier as far as possible.
After many repetitions it will be possible. The problem is the fact that
the athlete will not always be in his best condition when the coach is trying to
get him to run these maximum speed pieces. Eventually the athlete will be
running with a speed lower than his best, which means such a practice is a waste
of time and doesn’t provide any gain. The
necessity of running 30-50 yd pieces with maximal speed comes from the fact that
even top world sprinters cannot run their fastest for even such a short distance
as 100 meters, which lasts around 10-11 sec for the best men or women. Usually they are gaining speed up to first third of the distance,
then in the second third they are at the level of their fastest, and in the last
third, close to the finish they are a little slower than in the second one. This
fact is due to the complicated biochemical and physiological processes of the
human body. This is a rule, we cannot change the time in which the athletes are
capable of producing maximum intensity work, but, what we can change is the production,
what they can deliver, for this physiologically limited period of time of
maximum intensity work. This will be possible only if we can provide the kind of
practice for the athlete where they have to move with the highest possible or
even faster than that. Only in this situation can we activate most all of the
motor units of the working muscles in synchronized work and in special
circumstances we can even recruit new motor units. These special circumstances are when we can put the athletes to run
faster than they are capable to. How much faster? Practically, now it is possible up to about 20% faster, which is a
great improvement over the highest possible. That means the athlete, who is
capable to run 40 yd for 4.90 seconds will now be able to run the distance for
3.9-4.0 seconds. How can that be provided? So far, we know three different ways,
with possible variations.
The first of them is running
downhill, when the acceleration of the body mass provides the desirable
overspeed at the bottom of the hill. The variation in such an organization is a
manageable ramp, where purposely, with the help of certain device, we can change
the inclination of the ramp. This is more comfortable because the coaches can
manipulate the incline up to degrees they need to. But this is extremely
expensive and difficult to build. Besides, it is possible to train only a few
individuals at a time, but not large teams. An important consideration is that
such a device provides very limited abilities for training agility.
The second way to provide overspeed
training is if we use a device to pull the athlete in the direction of the
movement. It’s usually an electronic device, with control over the speed, to
use on a track. The problem of this approach is that a coach cannot engage more
than one athlete at the time and such equipment, which is necessary to be heavy,
always has to be moved on and off the track. In other words it takes a lot of
time and effort to organize this kind of practice and it is also very expensive
The
third possibility is using the elastic qualities of various rubber bands,
stretch cords, bungee cords. In this case we can tie with bungee cords hooked to
the waist belts of two athletes, who are very close with respect to top speed
and body weight. With this organization we can train as many athletes as the
area can fit. It’s necessary only to have about 2 yd distance between each
pair for safety. It means that the narrow side of soccer field easily can handle
30-35 pairs, basketball – 7-8 and so on. All these numbers far exceeds the
number of players on respective teams. And this is if you exercise them at the
same time. If the coach decides to alternate them, which most of the time is
necessary for rest, the number of the people can be doubled. Some requirements
for better training of the athletes include:
-
Bungee
cords or the rubber bands to be capable for comfortable stretch up to double
length;
-
The
waist belts to be made in a way easy to move the position of the hook, allowing
drills for agility;
-
Stretches
of the elastic part of the equipment to be gradually improved, providing safety
transition to the overspeed effort
It’s
understandable that our athletes, from earlier examples, with best times of 4.90
sec at 40 yd dash are put in a situation more often (every week) to run these
distances for 3.9-4.0 sec, after a period of time practicing in this way,
without any doubts, they will run 40’s faster than 4.90. How much faster? For
period of 12 to 16 weeks, depending of how many practices per week – 2 or 3,
also depending on the age and level their improvements will vary between 0.3 to
1 seconds. This is the bottom line for relatively good athletes. It’s possible
for much bigger improvements for most of the people, who haven’t done this
kind of work before.
The
improvement of speed in one direction is not the only benefit from this kind of
training. Far more important, we can say priceless, for ball game sports, is
that the athlete can be trained with quick switches of direction, and they can
be gaining the highest possible speed in a new direction for an extremely short
period of time. In other words, on the base of overspeed, this kind of training
can affect one of the most unknown ways for improvement of the class of an
athlete –agility. This is the least
studied physical quality in sport. Even the definitions for agility are very
controversial.
In our
opinion, agility is a physical quality,
which allows the athlete for multiple switches of direction of movement of the
whole body, or parts of the body, in the quickest manner with the ability to
generate the highest possible speed in the new direction for the shortest period
of time.
Therefore,
the practice with elastic resistance can be very beneficial, particularly in the
area of switching of direction and the development of greater acceleration. In
other words we rely on the elastic qualities of the material to create not only
circumstances for training of the overspeed, but also for overspeed agility. The
most important part of overspeed agility training is that this can be made
specific for each sport by implementing the competitive drills for any given
sport into the training. This could be dribbling, head balls, jumping, and
running in different directions and even better it can be done with a partner.
With the
specificity of the movement, overspeed agility is the most efficient way for
building the bridge between the other parts of the conditioning – speed,
strength, endurance, flexibility and the competitive efforts. We already had the
chance to mention that the strongest, the fastest, and those with the greatest
endurance are not necessarily the best. The best one is usually the athlete who
can use these qualities in the most effective manner when he/she competes. In
contemporary sport there is no better way to develop the athletes potential to
the limits, than using this system for developing overspeed agility.
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