Programming
What is programming?
The main "daunting" challenges of being a combined events coach is being able to get a good program together. But what does that even mean?
A session plan would be how you've decided to structure that one off session. For various intermediate stages like microcycles, mesocylces, mid-term plans, long-term plans etc they provide structure and coupled with athlete visions/profiles and goals/targets can form a bigger picture. When you look at this however you soon realise there will be a negotiation between what you're able to deliver and provide for your athletes and what the athletes' needs are and planning for combined event athletes can swiftly become nightmarish, especially with a sizeable group with varying needs and aspirations.
What a "programming" approach does is not only encompass plans for session by session, by week, month, year, decade etc it also introduces this idea that large groups of athletes can do the same flavoured activity but do different progressions of it; giving the athletes that appropriate challenge.
I've seen "sequential"(Training events in the order they appear in a competition) and "metabolic" (Having sessions where you train events that use the same energy systems) or "Rhythmn and Technique" or "Time based" (Ground contact times). But unfortunately they aren't particularly beneficial for a few reasons: Sequential training isn't bad; just not practical to get a lot of mixed practice. "metabolic" programming is ....well, 9 of the 10 events are largely anaerobic (lactic and alactic). "Time based" training, while not a bad idea could lead to injury (overloading on plyometric activity etc). "little and often" or as Dan Pfaff has said "Smart, micro-dosed sessions beat the vigorous hard working athlete in the long run".
Long Term Focus
Imagine an incredibly demanding, physical activity. Whether it would be an ultra-distance race, cycle, swim or other challenge it would be pretty obvious that you may need to prepare for it; even if it was to minimise your risk of getting injured.
Suppose now that this activity is over several days and is made up of events that are incredibly technical. Not only must you prepare physically but there is a requirement to be technically prepared. Having a "practice" beforehand or a "dress rehearsal"!
Finally, all of the events of a Combined event competition(apart from the last ones of the competition; the Heptathlon's 800m and the Decathlon's 1500m) are explosive, powerful movements. Again, this will require specific adaptations in the athlete's body; developing their energy systems.
All of the above is needed to be trained in order to be a great combined event athlete (namely "Volume": an athletes overall capacity to do exercise, "Technique": an athlete's ability to move and perform movement patterns efficiently and "Speed": the athlete's ability to move at very high speeds.)
What's important?
So why is an athlete's Volume, Technique and Speed important?
- Volume is needed just to get through the competition. Doesn't matter how fast or technically efficient you are; if you can't make it through the competitions then that's a "DNF" and nobody wants that.
- Technique is needed as well. Without the movement patterns the athlete will run the risk of wasting energy. This can result in getting a lower score from a particular event. When an athlete doesn't channel energy efficiently this will decrease their volume for total work to be done. Events themselves become daunting tasks that prove too challenging with technique (Pole vault is the obvious example. If an athlete is not familiar with pole vaulting; the results aren't usually good!).
- Speed: So critical in determining just how well a combined event competition is going to go for the athlete. An athlete could have the Volume to complete the competition, the Technique to perform all the events but the Speed will determine how GOOD those events are and thus your points score. With no Speed -> Athlete will score little to no points.
But where to start? Should you focus on one rather than the other and rotate? Seasonal decisions? The short answer is that this is a question of "Blocking" (focussing on one thing for an extended period of time such as 5-6 weeks then moving on to another "block" or focus) or "Interleaving" (where all tasks/foci are continually being balanced/attended to. Think "little and often").
Something to think about...
Are you more into blocking or interleaving?
The biggest paradigm shift that specialist coaches need to get away from when coaching combined event athletes is that blocking (periodisation) may be really effective for individual events but for combined events it is interleaving, all the way.
Combined event athletes have to be explosive in a wide range of events. Speed work is crucial and to get that specific practice and energy system development needs to take place. Anatolij Bondarčuk in his "Transfer of Training in Sport" volumes uses an exercise classification hierarchy (right) pointing to what he found as the exercises that are the key indicator to determining whether they "transfer" (impact or carry over to positively affect performance) or not.
In terms of skill acquisition for technique, interleaving over a long period of time is by far the better option because you can do this in tandem with speed work and keeping the athlete's volume under control. By blocking training, athletes not only lose out on the other event's technical fluency but also the specific speed work associated with them. Rhythm and tempo can disappear and they are the most important things. Jean-Pierre Egger (Coach to Werner Gunthor) believes "Der Rhythmus ist die Persönlichkeit der Technik" or
The rhythm is the personality of the technique