Halvard wrote:
Bigpikle wrote:
Judging by todays medals this Norwegian training formula must still be working ;)
With two more gold today, a silver and a bronze (and two 4th) in endurance competitions the Norwegians have to do something right.
Also the Swedes train the same way, so does the winner of the 30k. So overall it looks like the polarized model has got a good start of the games ;-)
Dutch speedskating anyone?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24408352 Didn't have access to the whole article (which would give the real details), but the conclusions were:
"The relation between total training hours and time (successive Olympiads) was not progressive (r = .51, P > .5). A strong positive linear relation (r = .96, P < .01) was found between training distribution in zone 1 and time. Zones 2 and 3 both showed a strong negative linear relation to time (r = -.94, P < .01; r = -.97, P < .01). No significant relation was found between speed skating hours and time (r = -.11, P > .05). This was also the case for inline skating and time (r = -.86, P > .05). Conclusions: These data indicate that in speed skating there was a shift toward polarized training over the last 38 y. This shift seems to be the most important factor in the development of Olympic speed skaters. Surprisingly there was no relation found between training hours, skating hours, and time."
At least somewhat interesting that it was how they trained, not really how much. Surely, there has to be SOME critical volume to achieve results, but perhaps those are reached fairly quickly and equipment/technique play a larger role at speeds approaching 30 mph. This is a big red flag for me, but maybe the pool has already thinned to include only the top skaters, excluding an AG-type athlete.
If someone has access to the full article, maybe they can point out major flaws in the analysis, noting that it's a retrospective and not a designed trial. -J
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