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Elite Olympic Level Training Methods:
The field of Sports was inspired by the former Soviet Union
and the Eastern Block countries where sports medicine was seriously
practiced and their athletes enjoyed unprecedented success for decades
in the arena of top athletic competition. The Soviet Union established
research centers in the 1950s and 60s to develop a scientific approach
to training their national athletes. The reasons why so many of
these countries were successful in the Olympics and other world
competitions was because they employed extensive sports medicine
research, utilization and application. Application meaning that
the information derived from their research was successfully disseminated
from the scientists to the coaches and athletes, and utilization
in that the information was instrumental in formulating new training
and competition strategies.
Although in the United States there is much
knowledge about Sports Science, we do not always communicate or
utilize this knowledge in a way that effectively gets to our coaches
or our young athletes during their formative years when it is critical
to establish sound foundations for physical fitness. One would not
think of building a skyscraper if the underlying foundation is not
planned out to be sound enough to support the eventual weight of
the structure. Buildings may be built from the ground up, but they
designed from the top down, meaning, athletes must know what their
short-term seasonal goals are, or their ultimate lifetime goals,
so that the proper foundations for those fitness needs can be developed
today, and monitored all along the way, guiding the athlete, like
the building, to completion.
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