Someone tell Abadjiev that the Bulgarians only trained singles! In all seriousness, this video is so awesome.
Volume One
The word "adapt" comes from the Latin word
"adaptare," meaning "to join,” although this somewhat archaic
definition was later revised in 1956 to mean "to undergo modification so
as to fit new circumstances.” The latter
definition is better fit for this discussion.
Now, I had never heard the word adapt or adaptation
used in the context of athletic training or performance until I began reading
up on Ivan Abadjiev and his so-called "Bulgarian Method" a few years
ago. Abadjiev's basic concept is that an
individual, in this case an athlete, will adapt to whatever stresses are
imposed on their body, provided this stress is imposed gradually over time (I
have always thought that John Broz's "garbage man" analogy is an easy
way to explain the principal of adaptation to a normal person). Using this fundamental of evolutionary
biology as the starting point, I believe coaches should consider changing their
training programs to concentrate more heavily on driving the specific
adaptations necessary for their athletes to experience the highest level of success in competition.
Looking at competitions in the sport of
weightlifting, an athlete will typically open a meet with a snatch attempt anywhere
between 85-92 percentage of their competition best (the same is true later for
the clean and jerk provided the athlete does not miss all three of their snatch
attempts). Therefore, weightlifters need
to be comfortable handling loads of 90 percent or more in both lifts on the
same day. The best way to build this
type of confidence is to make these types of lifts consistently in
training. Abadjiev understood this
concept, and, more importantly, he came to learn that a high-frequency training
program grounded in singles over 90% would promote favorable adaptations within
his athletes. Simply put, you develop
proficiency with a task by performing it more often.
This begs the question, what lessons, if any, can
coaches in more traditional “endurance” sports take away from Abadjiev and his
Bulgarian Method? I believe the answer
is many.
First and foremost, I do not believe swimming, as competed at the national and/or
international level, is an endurance sport.
Some might disagree, but the fact is that twelve of the thirteen individual
events contested at the NCAA championship meet take less than four-and-half
minutes to complete, and ten take less than ninety-nine seconds (the lone exception
is the 1,650-yard freestyle, more commonly known simply as “the mile,” which
takes between fourteen and fifteen minutes to complete at that level). In addition to the individual events, all the
relay splits also take less than ninety-ninety seconds to complete. This
bias towards top-end speed means the sport of swimming is strength and power based, not endurance
based! Therefore, athletes need to
be prepared to race at a high intensity
level (in this context, “intensity” is defined as the percentage of the
athlete’s best 100-yard time. Even in
one of the longer events, the 500-yard freestyle, an athlete will usually hold
a pace between 85-90% of their best 100-yard freestyle for consecutive 100-yard
splits). Analyzing races from this
mathematical perspective helps illustrate why most conventional swim practices
fail to produce the ideal adaptations, primarily because athletes are accumulating
far too much volume at far too low an intensity level.
I plan to make this post a multi-volume article so
please stay tuned for future updates.
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