17 minute read
TRAINING – The Principles of Training
The Principles of Training
The previous two articles of this series outlined the key components of an orienteer’s fitness, which are: 1. A high capacity to utilize oxygen (VO2max) 2. A high lactate threshold – the ability to run at relatively fast speeds without accumulating lactic acid 3. Good running economy
This article will look at the principles that we need to apply to our training in order to improve these factors. There is no magic recipe for training that suits everyone, but by understanding the basic principles we can make informed decisions about what is right for us. Individuals vary in the amount and intensity of training that they perform best on. What someone can undertake may be too much and injure another person. Additionally the amount of training for each individual will vary at different times, depending upon what other demands they are experiencing, including work stresses and personal factors. Additionally when reaching the Masters age groups, ageing is liable to reduce the amount of training that can be performed, often it is a case of the spirit being willing but the body needing more time to recover.
Each sport has specific fitness requirements, so we need to tailor our training accordingly. Which is why the participants in different sports need to train differently. Of course there is often some overlap in the fitness requirements of different sports, with for example, a fit squash player being fitter for Orienteering than a sedentary person, but even the best squash players wont be as fit for Orienteering as the best orienteers because the fitness requirements are different and they train differently. The reverse will also be true, as many of us who consider ourselves to be quite fit find out when we attempt a sport or activity to which we are unaccustomed.
So getting fit for a particular sport is not just about “doing a bit of exercise”. For training to be really effective it should be planned in accordance with the physical demands of the sport and with definite aims. If training isn’t carefully thought out it’s not likely to give you the best possible results. No exercise session should be undertaken as an isolated event, but should form part of a planned program. So in order to get the most benefit from your training you need to apply the principles of training which are as follows; (i) Overload, (ii) Specificity, (iii) Duration, (iv) Intensity, (v) Frequency, (vi) Recovery, (vii) Progression, (viii) Reversibility and (ix) Periodisation.
Overload
The idea of training is to promote improvements in the physical condition of the body. Exercise is the stimulus that promotes these improvements. However in order to stimulate the desired improvements, the body has to experience a certain amount of physiological stress - it has to work harder than it normally does in most everyday activities. For example to stimulate improvements in the cardiovascular system’s (heart and blood) capacity to deliver oxygen to your muscles (VO2max) you have to make the heart beat harder and faster. Additionally, in order to increase your muscles’ capacity to use the oxygen you have to make them exercise at levels that require large amounts of oxygen, and perhaps for brief periods just beyond their oxygen utilizing capacity. This is also liable to improve you lactate threshold. For an orienteer these training stimuli are best achieved by running for foot orienteers and by cycling for mountain bike orienteers.
If trying to increase the strength of your muscles (as this may assist with running uphill and over difficult ground features, and has particular implications for older orienteers who may lose strength due to ageing), you have to make your muscles work against harder resistances than they would normally encounter. This can be achieved by weight training. Whereas to improve your flexibility, you have to stretch your muscles and move your joints through a greater range of movement than usual. Each of these activities provide the required overload and stimuli needed to produce improvements in these aspects of your fitness, which if applied correctly will improve your performance and will be covered in a future article .
Specificity
Any improvements in fitness will be related to the type of training being undertaken. For example doing weight training in a gym will increase the strength of your muscles but will have little, if any, impact upon your VO2max. The specificity of changes in cardiovascular fitness (VO2max) may be divided into those associated with delivering oxygen to the muscles (primarily involving the heart, blood and lungs) and those involved with utilizing the oxygen when it gets to the muscles (primarily involving the biochemistry and morphology of the muscles).
It is recognised that almost any form of cardiovascular exercise (jogging, cycling, swimming and aerobics) will cause improvements in oxygen delivery and will therefore have some fitness benefit to an orienteer, but the improvements in oxygen utilization primarily occur in the specific muscles being used for that activity. This is why runners need to spend most of their time running, swimmers swimming and cyclists cycling. That is not to say that they should not do the other activities and indeed on occasions they may benefit from them. For example a runner may switch to cycling if they have an injury, as this will help to maintain a certain amount of cardiovascular fitness as they recover from the injury. Also, by doing another form of training you may prevent staleness and overuse injuries that can occur if one activity is repeated too often. However if not injured, cycling will not be as effective as running at improving their running performance and vice versa, as the muscles are used in different movements, differ in their relative
contribution to the activity and therefore experience different training stimuli.
This principle is also applicable to the development of an economical running and/or cycling action. The best way to develop an economical technique is to repeat that movement many, many times. That way our nervous system learns to send the most appropriate signals to the correct muscle groups. Consider it an extension of how you learned to walk as a young child, going from difficult steps that had to be concentrated upon, to a smooth and fluent automatic action, and this is a further extreme refinement of that process, either in terms of your running gait or muscle recruitment patterns when cycling.
So in the case of Orienteering the concept of specificity includes the consideration of the type of Orienteering being trained for, such as foot, bike or ski. Additionally you may need to consider the terrain you want to compete on. For example, as mentioned in the previous article, many runners are fast on paths, which is good for street-O, but it requires a more specialist form of fitness and running technique to run fast over rough terrain and dodge trees at speed. This can best be achieved by training over rough terrain and in forests, therefore all bush orienteers should consider spending at least some of their training time off paths.
Intensity
Intensity of training refers to how hard you make it. Most Orienteering training is liable to be at an intensity that makes you work quite hard but which can be sustained quite comfortably for in excess of 30 minutes. Those who are familiar with the idea may use their heart rate as a gauge of exercise intensity and although it can be extremely variable between individuals, somewhere between 65 and 85% of your maximum heart rate is often used as a rough guide for your ‘training zone’. Steady training at this level will provide a certain amount of the overload and necessary training stimuli described above.
However whilst some form of steady running or cycling will form the foundation of Orienteering fitness training, in reality Orienteering courses require the participants to run or cycle at a variety of intensities. With phases of harder work such as going uphill of over rough ground being mixed in with slightly easier phases such of going down hill or being on a path as you recover from a period of high exertion. So if you are serious about your fitness you’ll need to supplement your steady running with some sessions that include training at a higher intensity.
One way to do this is to run or cycle at a speed that is faster than your normal comfortable training pace. By working hard your cardiovascular system will have to deliver, and your muscles will have to utilize more oxygen, thereby providing a greater training stimulus. If you work hard at a speed you can only just sustain for about 30 minutes, you’ll also be producing a substantial amount of lactic acid that your body will be removing as rapidly as it can. At these speeds you’ll attain a delicate balance between your muscles producing lactic acid and its removal. If you were to work any harder your lactate production would exceed its removal and accumulate causing fatigue. You are therefore working at that threshold, which is why such training is sometimes referred to as lactate threshold training. It is liable to be at the kind of intensity that you experience during a hard competition.
Another way to increase training intensity, and hence the training overload, is by doing interval training. Interval training may be organised in a number of ways - fartlek, parlauf relays or set designated intervals. They all work on a similar principle by interspersing repeated periods of high intensity exercise with phases of recovery, usually in the form of easy jogging or cycling. A detailed discussion of the different variations on this theme and the specific training benefits requires a whole article in itself and will be dealt with later, but I will generalise the benefits by saying that, the basis behind this form of training is that it requires the cardiovascular system to work harder than it would on a steady run or cycle thereby providing extra overload.
For example, when doing an interval session of 12x2-minute efforts with a one minute recovery between each, or a hill session of 12 hills with a recovery between each one, the whole cardiovascular system will be required to deliver oxygen to the muscles at a much faster rate than on a steady run. Similarly the muscles will be required to use as much oxygen as they can thereby providing an even greater training effect than you would get during a session of steady running or cycling. During the efforts you’re liable to be working at 100% of your VO2max, whereas during a comfortable steady run or cycle you may be only at 70% VO2max and during a lactate threshold session about 85% VO2max. Indeed during the brief efforts of an interval session the muscles are liable to have to work beyond their maximum capacity to use oxygen and will accumulate fatiguing lactic acid, which will provide stimuli to help to improve your lactate threshold. However you need to be reasonably fit before you even attempt this type of training as it is very hard work and it is certainly too tiring to do everyday.
Duration and Frequency
The duration of training should reflect the prolonged endurance nature of Orienteering. To gain cardiovascular fitness a session should last for at least 30 minutes, although this will depend on the individual and their current level of fitness. Indeed for the unfit, 30 minutes may be too long until they have become accustomed to the training whereas for a very fit orienteer 30 minutes may be too short and an hour a day may be more appropriate. For interval sessions the duration will include about 10 minutes of easy exercise as a warm-up and cool down at the beginning and end of the session.
Even if training is of the correct type, intensity and duration, improvements in fitness will only occur if the training is repeated often enough. Training once a week will be better than doing nothing, twice a week better still and three times a week even better. However there is a point of diminishing return and whilst additional sessions may continue to bring some benefit the effects become less pronounced. When this point is reached depends upon the individual and their level of fitness. Some orienteers appear to be able to train every day whereas others function better on 4 runs a week. Just remember that even though 3 sessions a week may be good, 30 a week may not be 10 times better and you have to find what suits you. The most suitable duration and frequency of training is best judged by the individual who has to balance the additional benefits of doing more with the increased risk of overuse injury and perhaps in extreme cases overtraining if attempting to do too much. The best advice is to listen to your body.
Recovery
The purpose of training is to place certain physiological stresses on the body and then let it adapt to these. However the body must be given the opportunity to adapt and recover. Exercise can cause a certain amount of unwanted physical stress, deplete energy reserves and cause damage to the muscles tendons and joints, which if allowed to heal will go unnoticed. However if not allowed to heal then training with this damage, even if unnoticed, will cause further damage and the body tissues will start to break down. This is the typical scenario of an overuse injury.
Some recovery must be planned and incorporated into a training program on a regular basis, typically this may be a rest day during the week, an easy day for those who insist on training every day or switching to another form of exercise. Research has indicated
a reduced incidence of injury in those who take regular rest days and without a loss in fitness. Indeed overtraining which can result in a decline in performance, injury, a loss of motivation, immune suppression and hormonal imbalances is a major problem with high level performers in many sports and regular rest days can help to prevent it. Certainly be wary of training hard on consecutive days and reduce your training prior to an important event - a process known as tapering.
Progression
If training is effective it will bring about improvements in fitness, which means that the body will start to find the exercise easier and experience less overload. This is fine if you have achieved your desired level of fitness. If however you wish to continue to improve you must once again place more overload on your body. This is referred to as progression and should be applied carefully in a systematic manner. It can be applied by increasing one or a combination of the following; (i) the intensity of the exercise (training harder), (ii) the duration of the exercise (training for longer) and (iii) the frequency of the exercise (training more often). Alternatively changing the type of terrain you train over can also increase the overload as when moving off the paths onto the rough ground. Progression must be applied gradually if the body is to be given time to adapt and maximum increases of 10% a week or less are often advocated with regard to total mileage.
Reversibility
This refers to the fact that if you stop training for a prolonged period of time your body starts to loose fitness and will revert to a sedentary level. But you don’t need to worry about taking a few days off as you won’t lose much fitness in such a short time. Indeed a few days off whilst you are recovering from an illness or injury is essential and will do you more good than trying to continue training. However when you do start training again don’t try to go straight back to what you were doing before. Start at an easier level and build up gradually, this is even more significant if you’ve had a long lay-off - your body won’t be able to withstand the stresses you used to place upon it and therefore you must allow it to adapt slowly over a period of weeks or even months in some cases.
Periodisation
Training programs should be planned on a weekly, monthly, seasonal and in some cases a 2 - 4 year basis. They will usually involve a planned change of emphasis at different times of the year, a factor known as periodisation. This process is used by many top performers and coaches in all sports to try and ‘peak’ for the most important events. Training programs are commonly divided up into phases such as; (i) general conditioning, (ii) event specific, (iii) competition and (iv) recovery. The training during each of these phases will vary with the general aim being to reach the peak of fitness during the competition phase when the most important events are held.
General conditioning is the phase where you build up your fitness base by doing a relatively large volume of mileage and some strengthening work. Essentially this phase provides a foundation of fitness, which should get you fit for the more intensive and demanding event specific phase during which you sharpen up your fitness. In this second phase the volume of training often diminishes but the quality increases by incorporating interval work, hill repetitions and the more intensive forms of training. During the competition phase the training loads need to be reduced in order to ensure that the orienteer is fresh for the important competitions and therefore training is often just a means of ticking over or providing a means of active recovery and fine tuning between events.
The recovery phase occurs after the main competitions and is used to enable both the mind and body of the orienteer to recover ready to start the cycle again. Throughout all these phases a certain amount of flexibility, strengthening and cardiovascular fitness work should be undertaken at all times to maintain these aspects of fitness. It is the relative intensity, duration, frequency, volume and emphasis of each that changes.
Summary
Competitive Orienteering requires a specific form of fitness that should be developed through a carefully constructed training program, applying the principles of training to the demands of the sport. Some forms of training may develop a single fitness component while others may develop a mixture. The correct balance must be attained within a whole program if the correct form of fitness is to be achieved. Factors such as Orienteering skills and psychological work may be incorporated into fitness training sessions to create added interest, provided that it is not to the detriment of the fitness training work.
All training programs must be flexible with modifications incorporated when necessary. For example a slight illness may set you back a few weeks, in which case it is important do a few easy sessions once you start training again and not try to catch up for lost time by attempting to do too much too soon. You may also find that you were over-ambitious with your initial ideas and therefore need to modify the program, or alternatively you may readjust your sights towards something more demanding. Whatever training you are doing or planning for someone else, it must be considered alongside other commitments such as work, family life, exams and so on. Think carefully about how you are going to fit it into your lifestyle and whether what you have set yourself is realistic. Whenever you do each session remember to include a warm-up and cool down.
Finally training should be enjoyable, and sometimes doing a session or an activity just for the fun of it is enough justification in itself as it will refresh the individual mentally and provide new interest both of which are just as important as any fitness gains.
Professor Steve Bird is Director, Centre for Population Health, Sunshine Hospital, Melbourne. Steve worked with the Great Britain National Orienteering Squad for over 10 years.
AN innocuous looking water channel on the map became a major hurdle for competitors in the 2004 European Sprint Championships held near Roskilde, Denmark.
European Sprint Champs ‘04
Photographers had a perfect vantage point to capture shots of unsuspecting orienteers as they plunged into the water. Photos courtesy Matthias Merkli.
Finland’s Minna Kauppi pauses before puttng all she has into a giant leap. Eventual winner, Simone Niggli-Luder of Switzerland, finds the water a lot deeper than she had thought.
