Shosholoza down but not out in Louis Vuitton Cup

Wednesday was a tough day for South African sailing enthusiasts. . .

Shosholoza faced the behemouth BMW Oracle in their first match race, but refused to be intimidated by the American boat's gargantuan budget and vastly experienced crew. Instead they started evenly and Shosholoza lead for over half the race, constantly putting pressure on the American boat to stay with them.

As they started the second lap of the race course, the boats split----one to the left, one to the right side of the course. No one could see who had the advantage, and all had to wait until they came back together to see which side of the course paid off. Unfortunately for Shosholoza, BWM Oracle nudged ahead during their split. . .and with the American's superior boat and racing experience, that was all they needed to hang on for the win.

In their second race against #2 Luna Rossa, Shosholoza never lead outright but stayed with the Italian boat all the way around the race course. They did not have speed to pull even and head, though, and finished just off the pace in what a solid showing by them.

It is tempting at this point to give in and congratulate Shosholoza on a job well done, and resign ourselves to the fact that they will not make the semi-finals. After all, they have far exceeded everyone's expectations of their performance. They have learned from all of their mistakes along the way, and proved that, even given an inferior boat compared to the larger syndicates, they can mix it up and dice for the win in any given race.

Wouldn't it be easy to finish the last few races with a couple of wins, end in the middle of the pack, take stock of a great campaign, and pack it in for the next America's Cup?

It would be easy. But we know a lot of these guys on the boat, and they are true competitors and will continue to fight for every point. Their work is cut out for them, and as usual they have left little room for error. However a spot in the semis is not out of the question yet.

Based on the current standings, Shosholoza must score at least four more wins to even think about the semis, but they are still to race against three of the bottom feeders and the remaining middle competitors.

Listen to the live race radio here---racing is scheduled to start mid-afternoon in Spain.

Good luck Shosholoza!

Shosholoza
Ku lezontaba
Stimela si qhamuka
Wen u ya baleka
Wen u ya baleka
Ku lezontaba
Stimela si qhamuka

Training programmes - the key principle of overload

Are you in a situation where you have been training dilligently for a while now, but have stopped seeing results? Perhaps you are new to this training thing and you haven't really got much idea of how to go about constructing your training programme? Or you find that as soon as you try to do any big distance or speed work, you break down injured? Well, then, read on....

TRAINING PRINCIPLES 101: OVERLOAD AND RECOVERY

A famous legend has it that Milo the Greek developed his super-human strength by lifting a young calf while he was still a young shepherd boy. Over time, as the calf grew into a bull, he continued to lift it, the result being that his strength increased in proportion to the size and mass of the bull he was lifting. This story is often quoted to illustrate what is perhaps the most important and foundational principle behind developing a successful training programme - the PRINCIPLE OF OVERLOAD.

Basically, this principle states that in order to see progressive gains (in this case, running or cycling faster), you need to progressively increase the load (distance or speed of running or riding). However, in order to fully understand the principle, a basic knowledge of physiology is required, because it's not as simple as just running a little further every day! If this was true, you could add 500 m to your daily running distance and in a year's time, you'd be running 180 km non-stop!!!. Obviously, this is unrealistic, and the reason it doesn't work is because it does not take into account the fact that you have to RECOVER as well, which is principle number 2.

So in order to make sense of these training principles, it's important to understand a famous principle from biology, which explains why you get injured, overtraining, burned out and also why you can, if you are wise, improve performance. This is the Selye Adaptation Principle.

The Selye Adaptation principle

The Selye General Adaptation Principle states that when an organism (you) is placed under stress, it undergoes a typical or characteristic reaction to that stress, which ultimately results in adaptation and possibly failure if the stressor is prolonged or severe enough. In the case of training for running, all training bouts are perceived by the body as stress, and the key is to ensure that the stress produces positive changes, without ever reaching the point of failure or exhaustion. The stages are:

Alarm reaction

Occurs immediately after the stress is perceived. During this stage, your performance will be impaired as the stress must be responded to. So if you've ever noticed that soon after starting to train, you find that you just seem to be getting worse and worse...this is the reason. More specifically, this is why immediately after a session, or even up to two or three days after certain sessions, performance is impaired and the athlete will feel that the training is making them worse, rather then better. It's also the reason why resting and recovering as so vital - your body is dealing with the training, and anything you can do to help it is of course, very welcome!

Period of adaptation

This follows the alarm reaction and will occur only if the stress is ‘manageable’. That is, you must be able to adapt and recover sufficiently from one training session to the next. This is the reason that the severity of training must be altered, and is the major reason why rest days and easy days are essential in any training programme. The period of adaptation is what we are all aspiring to achieve, and requires a sustained period of training and recovery. We'll cover these tricks of the trade in future posts.

Plateau

This period occurs because your body has responded maximally to the stress and no further improvements in performance are possible. Most training programmes will end here, or a new stimulus is required, otherwise you can gradually worsen and eventually fail. If the programme has worked successfully, your racing season or your goal race will occur right at the start of the plateau phase, and will be followed by a period of inactivity and a new training programme, designed to push the athlete beyond the plateau. This is a dangerous period, because it precedes the stage of failure or distress. Performance stops improving and the temptation is often to train harder or faster, and this means that the stressor is increased, which actually pushes the body into the alarm stage, and only serves to worsen performance further. So begins a cycle of deteriorating performance.

Failure or distress stage

This stage occurs if the stressor is not managed appropriately, with the result that you cannot continue to adapt and respond to it. Performance then deteriorates rapidly and you become sick or overtrained or injured. This happens when there is insufficient rest and the severity of the training stress (distance and intensity and frequency) are not managed intelligently, as described previously. This is also something we'll cover in detail in the future - how do you put together the programme to minimize this risk?

The goal of a training programme is, as described, to ensure that this stage is never reached, but rather that you recover sufficiently for the training stress to be altered to cause what is known as a rebound, where performance improves rather than worsens.

Applying this to YOUR training

The simple take home message from this, is that if you want to get faster, then you must run faster than your currently ‘comfortably manageable’ speed. Similarly, if you want to improve endurance, you must constantly aim to run further than you have previously done in your training. But it's just as critical to realise that you also need rest, otherwise you will very quickly enter the "FAILURE STAGE", and end up burned out, injured and overtrained.

In future articles, we'll cover the specifics of how to achieve this - how much rest is needed, when is training too extreme, and other tricks that you can use to make the most of your training time!

Join us then!

Ross and Jonathan

Australia - cricket's first dynasty?

In America we seem to be obsessed with the concept of sporting dynasties. As soon as a team wins a couple of championships, or does well in the post-season, the whispers and murmurs begin. For a true example of how much we talk about this here, just search for "sports dynasty" on Wikipedia!

All the professional and collegiate level sports in the USA have their dynasties---even collegiate cheerleading, although we challenge anyone to name the school who has won 15 championships between 1985-2006. The more well known dynasties, the ones that even sports fans seem to know, include the NFL's San Francisco '49ers who in the 1980's won four Superbowls in nine years; the Los Angeles who won five NBA titles between 1979-1991; and Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls of the 1990's who won an incredible six NBA titles in eight seasons and have the best single season record ever at 72-10.

The concept of a sports dynasty has not yet extended to cricket, though if it did, the Australian test and one-day cricket team of the 1990's and 2000's would surely qualify. Since 1999, they have not lost a world cup match, a streak that has brought three consecutive world titles. They have also won the Champions Trophy, defeated every single Test playing nation at least twice, won an amazing 68% of test matches (losing only 16%), and have suffered only 4 series defeats out of 40 test match series. Incidentally, South Africa are next best since 1997, winning 47% of test matches, while losing 27%. That is dominance in anybody's book.

So what makes a dynasty, then? Perhaps the simplest explanation is that a dynasty is the result of bringing a number of right individuals to the same place at the right time. Team presidents, coaches, assistant coaches, and players all converge at the same time to produce a number of winning seasons and championship success.

Another way to explain sporting dynasties is that they are a function of the coach. The best example of this is Phil Jackson, who coached the Bulls of the 1990's to their remarkable run of wins, and then went on to coach the Los Angeles Lakers to another three NBA titles from 1999-2004. Admittedly, Jackson coached a player who many consider the greatest player in the history of the NBA (Michael Jordan) and an all-star supporting cast while guiding the Bulls, and went on to coach another (at least) two future Hall of Famers with the Lakers (Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant). However it must be said that it is no small feat to continue winning at any level, and to continue to coach players to their full potential.

So is the Australian dynasty really a function of their coach? Probably not, since in cricket the role of the coach is diminished compared to other sports. While the coach has an important role to play (think Bob Woolmer and SA cricket in the late 1990's, and Alex Ferguson with Manchester United), the specifics of his role are determined by the particularly dynamic that exists within the team at the time of his reign. This is particularly apparent in South African cricket, where we seem to have had a series of coaches who have effectively been relegated to the role of training assistants under the influence of an overly-dominant captain, first with Hansie Cronje, then with Graeme Smith (just ask Ray Jennings).

Nor has the Australian cricket team achieved their success with the same core of players. Only three of the players who lost in the final against Sri Lanka in 1996 played in the World Cup triumph against Sri Lanka on Saturday. Having said that, those three players are among the greatest the game has seen - Glenn Mcgrath, Adam Gilchrist and Ricky Ponting will go down in history as all-time greats, much like Michael Jordan and Shaq will do for basketball, and Babe Ruth and Roger Maris in baseball.

Therefore perhaps the real dynasty behind the success of this sporting program lies in the halls of its training institutions and not on its fields. Perhaps these sporting dynasties have managed to attract the right combination of individuals on a regular basis so that their production of top players and coaches has remained high and constant for the past 10-15 years.

The most startling of all outcomes from the world cup has been the difference between Australia and South Africa's reactions to their performances. One team has gone on record saying that there is no problem, the world cup was a great success and they look forward to implementing lessons learned, further saying that we do not need a drastic change in personnel or structures. The other has begun planning for the next World Cup, announcing a squad of players who have been awarded contracts, including 4 completely new names to the international fold. The great irony is that the team who is planning is Australia, while South Africa, who managed to win only 4 out of 7 games against test-playing nations, is under the impression that things are on course and we are a coin-toss or a lucky break away from being as good as Australia.

Three weeks before the World Cup, Australia announced that Tim Nielsen would be taking over from John Buchanan as the coach of Australia after the tournament. Clearly, Nielsen would be stepping into some large shoes, but he's also had the support and backing of an administration that has learned the rather rare and unique trick of learing from their success. In South Africa, we seem to struggle to learn from our failures. And that is one reason why we will never become a great sporting dynasty, the mentality of South Africans to circle the ox-wagons and put up their defences will prevent us from ever moving forward.

So what makes a great sporting dynasty? Foresight, and the ability to plan, strategize and implement those ideas. And key to this is identifying and then training up the right people to fill the right jobs. As has been discussed on this site, the training of coaches is crucial to a country's sporting success, and so perhaps one final way to explain sports dynasties is by examining those individuals who do the work behind the scenes, the coach, his support staff and the administration.

***************
For a great read about the type of person it takes to build a sports dynasty, check out this article about Red Auerbach, the architect of nine straight NBA titles with the Boston Celtics.

Coaching corner - our mission

At the Science of Sport, it's our mission to provide practical, realistic, and cutting-edge information and knowledge on running and cycling training to you. We want to provide the very best tips and advice to help you improve and enjoy your running and cycling performance. Whatever your question or concern, we aim to address it!

So look out for our series of feature articles on training tips and techniques to make the most of your running, cycling, swimming and triathlon performances.

Some of the topics we will cover are:

• Putting your training programme together
• Concepts and principles behind training
• How to integrate speed work and higher intensity training into the training programme
• Diet and nutrition for optimal performance
• Technology and your training - heart rate monitors, GPS, iPods, and other technological innovations and how you can make best use of these
• How to avoid overdoing it - signs and symptoms of overtraining
• Hill training, track workouts and tempo runs
• Training injuries and common errors
  
• The physiology behind running, cycling and swimming performance
• Racing - tactics, strategies and approaches for success
• Lessons from the labs - a scientific view of different types of training techniques and methods

We will aim to write at least 2 or 3 feature articles PER WEEK, where we describe anything and everything that will help you perform better, without injury! So be sure to check us out regularly for everything you could ever need to know!

Also, feel free to drop us an email and ask questions - our email address is sportsscientists@gmail.com

We look forward to having you along!!!!

Ross and Jonathan