Driving Performance

The realities of maximizing performance and adaptation without overtraining and overreaching. Dr. Carl Foster will discuss how to best understand training stress using both theory and the applied importance of periodizing plans. How to predict overreaching using the most scientific method of determining “training stress” as opposed to counting hours.

The pathway that produces elite athletes is the focal point of many nations’ and teams’ high performance strategy. Identifying, and then managing the environment that develops a talented junior into a potential Olympic medalist or World champion is fundamental to sporting achievement, and is optimized in a number of different ways around the world. Recently, the issue has been polarized into two dogmas – a talent model, and a training model. In the talent model, popularized by a handful of recent best-selling books, it is proposed that talent is a myth, that all individuals share common genes, and that 10,000 hours of deliberate practice are necessary to activate these dormant genes in order to become elite. This has implications for age of initiation of sport, as well as specialization, and the overall design of our sporting systems from school to professional level.

In this presentation Professor Ross Tucker will analyze the concepts put forward by this model, and describe how a rigorous and complete scientific understanding of elite sports performance, from genes, to daily training environments, reveals that often, doing the “right thing” is not necessarily the best thing, and what implications this may have for our strategic thinking about producing champions.

The session will discuss how Gold Medal Coaches address:

• What sources of information do you find reliable? How do you develop a sport science team?
• What are some early indicators for identifying talent?
• How much time is spent on muscle strength, muscle endurance and neuromuscular fitness? Pre season / in season / off season
• At what point in the training season, is general fitness the highest?
• How do you address illness and injury among elite athletes – what are some rules of thumb for return to play?

Jean Côté is a Canadian author who recently developed a conceptual model that incorporates the elements necessary for a developmentally sound approach to sport involvement; the Personal Assets Framework. The Personal Assets Framework includes three determinants that interact to create positive experiences in sport: 1) taking part in activities, 2) while entertaining relationships with others, 3) in a specific setting. Research that links the three basic elements of sport (activities, relationships, and settings) to positive changes in personal assets and long-term outcomes of athletes will be discussed in this presentation. Furthermore, practical implications will be offered to enhance the design of sport programs that are developmentally appropriate.