Training and Coaching
Training and Coaching tests whether you can apply training principles to a real block of work - producing adaptation without breaking the athlete - and whether you understand how coaching behaviour (instruction, feedback, questioning) changes learning.
Principles of training
- Specificity - adaptation follows demand; train the energy system, muscle action and movement pattern you will race in.
- Overload and progression - the stimulus must exceed current capacity and rise over time.
- Recovery/adaptation - the training effect occurs between sessions; supercompensation only happens when recovery is adequate.
- Reversibility - aerobic enzymes fall within days, strength within weeks.
- Individuality and variation - the same programme produces different responses in different athletes.
Periodisation
Macrocycle (season) → mesocycle (3–8 weeks, one dominant objective) → microcycle (usually a week). An annual plan runs preparation (general then specific), competition, and transition. Tapering - a 40–60% volume reduction with intensity retained over roughly 1–3 weeks - is the best-supported peaking strategy. Undulating models vary load more often and suit sports with dense competition calendars.
Coaching the session
A warm-up should raise heart rate and tissue temperature, activate key muscles, mobilise joints and potentiate the movements to follow. Feedback should be knowledge of performance (technique cue) early in learning and knowledge of results (outcome) later. Teaching styles range from command (fast, safe, low cognitive load) to reciprocal, guided discovery and problem-solving, which build decision-making but need more time and a safe environment.
Worked example
A badminton player is five weeks from a ranking event and reports flatness; resting heart rate is up 8 bpm and court movement looks heavy. Reasoning: fatigue plus elevated resting heart rate plus declining performance indicates accumulated load, not a need for more volume. The answer is a deload week (volume down around 40%, on-court intensity preserved), then two weeks of specific match-play loading, then a short taper - not a new fitness block.
Traps that cost marks
- Prescribing more training to fix underperformance.
- Confusing periodisation with simply varying exercises.
- Giving constant feedback during practice, which kills self-monitoring.
- Ignoring sleep, school and travel when calculating weekly load.
- Writing a plan for the average athlete rather than this athlete.