Talent, training and performance: The secrets of success

Posted: 09 Aug 2011 05:12 AM PDT

Genes vs training: The secrets of success

Apologies for the post-Tour de France "black hole" that was The Science of Sport! Following and analyzing three weeks of racing left the inevitable backlog of work, which also happened to pick up to warp-speed at the conclusion of the Tour! However, recovery time now over, I am in the process of putting together the next series, which I'll start as soon as I can, on The Physiology of Pacing Strategies. That will be a video series, consisting of perhaps six or seven short videos, which will bring us neatly to the IAAF World Championships in Daegu.

Genes, innate ability and talent? Or practice makes perfect? Is it all in the training?

But for this week, a few posts on a topic that is both fascinating and, for me, very frustratingly hyped in the media (and, astonishingly, sports science), and that's the issue of genetics/talent vs training as a requirement for success. I recently co-authored a review on this for the journal Dialogues in Cardiovascular Medicine, and am busy working on a second review on the relative contribution of genes and practice to performance. Those articles will be published in 2012 (I'll let you know when). I have also done a few presentations on this in the last few weeks, at the University and to the public, so it's a topic that I'm pretty immersed in at the moment.

And then last night, I received an email from a journalist with the Evening Standard of London, asking for some thoughts on a piece that they carried a few days ago. It was an article called "Why we're the best", and it speaks about culture, practice, genes (or the lack thereof) and other factors that determine why, for example, Kenya produces great runners, China great table tennis players and Australia great swimmers.

You can read that piece here, but I just want to highlight some of the key phrases that warrant a mention, and then evaluate them critically. I'll do this in two parts.
  1. The first (this post) will look at claims about the role of training and practice on performance
  2. The second (later this week) will look at genes and how genetics may influence performance.
Why we win: Culture, practice but not really the genes? Champions are born, not made?

The video below shows Matthew Syed, author of "Bounce" and he puts forwards some of the same concepts as the article. It's worth a look, because Syed makes a number of claims that really need to be tested or questioned. Watch the video below, and take note of the following statements by Syed "Any validity" "Utterly transform the people we are" "all about genetics" "that's not what the science is saying" Then the following are quotes from the Evening Standard article, which further reflect this thinking:
Success, he [Peter Keen, director of performance at UK Sport] said, was "massively culturally determined" as it dictates what you can "interact with and what is denied you" as a sportsperson. Tradition, success, climate factors, cultural factors - these are more important than some apparently fundamental drivers, such as genetics.
"To be a high jumper it pays to be tall and this is true if you're Chinese or British," he continued. "But the simple truth of any successful athletic performance is a minimum of 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. That is typically eight to 10 years of your life, two to three hours a day, motivated by the belief that you can be something special."
Later in the article, it talks about the failure to discover the "speed" or "endurance" gene:
But despite Professor Morrison's assertion, attempts to identify a generic speed gene are unsatisfactory.
The search has focused on a gene known as ACTN3. This is because there are two types of muscle fibres, slow twitch and fast twitch. Slow twitch fibres are more efficient in using oxygen to generate energy but fast twitch fibres fire more rapidly and generate more force. These are the ones believed to aid speed and ACTN3 is the gene considered key to their development.
But despite huge testing programmes of Olympic athletes, not a single record-breaker has been identified with two copies of the variant in the gene. Dr Yannis Pitsiladis, who conducted tests for the University of Glasgow, says this means the impact of genes on identifying sporting excellence has too often been overstated. He adds: "To date there is zero predictive capacity in sports genetics."
Huge complexity, but an oversimplified, and unbalanced explanation

Let me start out by saying that culture, training, diet, opportunity are all crucial to producing sporting champions or elite performances. But the problem with the debate as it stands is the relative dismissal of physiological factors like genes, and also the extremely oversimplified view that "it's all about the training", or that science suggests genes don't matter. My purpose with these posts is thus not to dismiss the role of training, culture or belief, but rather to balance out the argument with the facts.

And in so doing, to give an indication of just how complex it really is - the only certainty is that whoever says that success is due to one or two things is wrong.

Testing the statements: The 10,000 hour concept

So there are a couple of claims in the above quotes from the article, and they're worth looking at a little more closely. We start with the 10,000 hour claim in today's post. Tomorrow, I'll look at the genes and the claims made about the absence of genetics.

It is stated in the article that "the simple truth of any successful athletic performance is a minimum of 10,000 hours of deliberate practice".

Deliberate practice means dedicated training in that activity. In this model, there is no such thing as talent transfer, and there is no is no allowance for accumulating training by play (this is a theory that has been challenged recently, but the deliberate practice model, which was proposed and really developed by Anders Ericsson, holds that only specific, dedicated training works.)

The origins of 10,000 hours

This 10,000 hour theory has its origins in a 1993 study by Ericsson, where he looked at the performance ability of violinists, and showed that the playing ability was determined by the cumulative hours of training up to the age of 20. That is, the best experts had accumulated the magic number of 10,000 hours whereas those classified as merely "good" or "least accomplished" were found to have done only 8,000 or 5,000 hours of practice, respectively. The graph below illustrates this main finding, where yellow and orange are the best performing violinists. Clearly, the average time taken to get to the 'elite' level is 10,000 hours, at least when it comes to playing a musical instrument:


Exceptions to the norm: What variance would indicate

There's another way to interpret this finding, which I'll get to later in the piece. First, a major statistical "omission" in the paper undermines how the conclusion of Ericsson and those who argue for 10,000 hours can be made.

I have that study, and what is remarkable about it is that Ericsson presents no indication of variance - there are no standard deviations, no maximums, minimums, or ranges. And so all we really know is that AVERAGE practice time influences performance, not whether the individual differences present might undermine that argument. Statistically, this is a crucial omission and it may undermine the 10,000 hour conclusion entirely.

I must emphasize this point strongly: If the theory is that 10,000 hours of practice are needed, and there is no innate ability, then you should not find a single person who has succeeded with fewer than 10,000 hours, and nor should anyone fail having done their 10,000 hours. Take a look at the graph below. I've highlighted only the "best expert" and "least accomplished" players, and shown some hypothetical dashed lines to show the ranges within each group.


It's conceivable that there is a range of practice times within each group, such that there is a person in the "least accomplished" group who does 10,000 hours (shown by the blue circle) without cracking that performance level, and a person who does less but succeeds (shown by yellow).

Unfortunately, Ericsson didn't show us this data, so we can only speculate. But that didn't stop Malcolm Gladwell from making this statement in his book "Outliers":
“The striking thing about Ericsson’s study is that he and his colleagues couldn’t find any “naturals”, musicians who floated effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction of the time their peers did.

Nor could they find any “grinds”, people who worked harder than everyone else, yet just didn’t have what it takes to break the top ranks.” – Outliers, pg 39
Again, I don't know how he arrives at these statements - Ericsson presented not a single measure to support these claims (and I happen to know that he didn't interview him either). As we'll see shortly, it is actually inconceivable that Gladwell's statements are true - other study of skilled performance show massive variations, and the same will be true for violinists, of this I'm certain.

But what he is saying above is that practice is NECESSARY (the first part of the quote - no one succeeds without doing the time), and that practice is SUFFICIENT (the second part - if you do the training, you will achieve the level). This is crucial to this debate - those advocating for 10,000 hours are saying that it is both necessary and sufficient.

Gladwell reinforces this when he goes on to quote someone called Daniel Levitin:
“The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert – in anything…no-one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time” – Daniel Levitin, quoted in Outliers (emphasis added)
That all of the above are claims completely out of context and without evidence becomes clear when you consider "what the science is actually saying", to borrow Syed's words from the clip above.


10,000 hours: Unnecessary and/or insufficient

So we start looking for evidence to test Levitin's (and Gladwell, and Syed, and Keen's) statements about 10,000 hours. We begin with chess. Gobet and Campitelli studied 104 chess players and measured practice time and performance level, and looked at the time taken to reach the Master level. This is their finding:


So, the average time taken is 11,053 hours. That's pretty much in agreement with Ericsson's violin players. So far so good. But look at that Standard Deviation - 5,538 hours, and it gives a co-efficient of variation of 50%. For those not into the statistics, what this basically shows is a "spread" of the values around the average. If the Standard Deviation is small, and the CV is low, then you have a tight cluster - all the individuals are close to the average. But when it's 50%, then you know you have massive differences within that group.

And that's what happens when you start looking at individuals - one player reaches master level on 3,000 hours, another takes almost 24,000 hours, and some are still practicing but not succeeding. That's a 21,000 hour difference, which is two entire practice lifetimes according to the model of practice. It seems pretty clear that practice, while important, is not sufficient for some. And for others, it's not even necessary.

But let's look at other sports. Darts has been studied, by Duffy and Ericsson. They find the following when looking at darts scores and accumulated practice time:


The figure above shows how much of performance can be explained by deliberate practice. In chess, which I showed above, it's 34%. In darts, 15 years of practice explains only 28% of the variation in performance between individuals! An extra-ordinary finding, because with all due respect, that's in darts...what else is there that influences performance? Yet practice time accounts for only a quarter of the performance differences.

What is most interesting about this is that 10 years of practice explained 25% of variability, while 15 years explains 28%. So clearly, the more you practice, the more you can explain performance. That's not surprising, but the question is this: How many hours of practice would it take to explain "most" of performance as a result of practice? Look at the quote in the figure above, where Ericsson writes that "the development of expert performance will be primarily constrained by individuals' engagement in deliberate practice" (Ericsson, 2009). Well, 28% is not "primarily constrained" and even though more practice explains more of performance, there is clearly a lot missing from this practice argument.

Sports examples: Very rarely do elite athletes need 10,000 hours

So far, we've looked at chess and darts, both skill sports, but neither is "physiologically-limiting" in the way that running, cycling or swimming may be. So let's expand our examples and look at other sports.

Start with Olympic wrestling, football and field hockey. Below are the findings from research on the USA Olympic athletes.


Clearly, 10,000 hours are rarely required. A follow up study on Australian athletes found that 28% had participated for fewer than four years in their sport - that's probably 3,000 to 4,000 hours, at most. One netball player from Australia had made the international stage on 600 hours of play.

Accelerated Talent ID and talent transfer

Australian skeleton is another interesting example - in 2002, they decided to adopt a systematic, accelerated talent ID approach to skeleton, and looked at sprinters, lifesavers and speed-skaters to find an Olympic skeleton athlete (Bullock et al, 2009). It took fourteen months and they had qualified athletes for the Olympic Games, despite no ice-experience, and despite the prevailing wisdom that you "have to learn a feel for the ice" through years of practice to become elite.

Similarly, in the UK, they have had amazing success with accelerated talent ID and talent transfer, producing world champions within years of first introduction to a sport.

And I must emphasize this point - if the 10,000 hour concept is true, and it really does require that this time be accumulated (that is, if 10,000 hours is necessary), then talent transfer would be impossible, as would accelerated performance trajectories that we've seen in Australia and the UK. And if genetics played only a small part, as some have argued, then Talent ID would also be wasteful and unnecessary, because any aspirant athlete would succeed, regardless of genetic "potential", providing they did the required training time. This is clearly not true - the actions of federations who invest in Talent ID suggest that despite their talk, they don't believe this anyway. But more on this tomorrow...

One important point is that different sports will have different requirements, different capacities for talent transfer and accelerated performance, and thus training time. Rowing, cycling, and canoeing are perhaps easier to learn later in life than skill-heavy sports. I dare say that tennis, golf may require much earlier exposure and training time - the skill component forces this. Similarly, sports like football or rugby may also require early exposure, because the tactical insights and understanding are crucial to success.

However, even here, it's possible to identify who will go on to become a professional within the very first years of playing the sport - the Gronigen talent studies have shown this, where at the age of 14, children can already be picked as future professionals because they develop skills, improve endurance and learn tactics faster than their peers. Differences in how quickly athletes improve, even in skill sports, suggests innate attributes that are predictive for success.


Greatness is recognizable early, long before 10,000 hours are accumulated: Michael Phelps and Missy Franklin


Having mentioned the fact that skill sport success can often be predicted very early, long before a player has accumulated 10,000 hours, it's worth looking at the examples of two swimmers at this point in the debate. Michael Phelps is the owner of more Olympic golds than any person in history, and his story reveals that greatness can be recognized very early on. He has told this story and described how he started serious training at the age of 11, doing approximately 1,000 hours per year.

At the age of 15, he was finishing fifth at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney. At 19 he wins 6 golds, and then 8 golds four years after that in Beijing 2008. But the key is that first Olympic performance, fifth at the age of 15, after only 4 years of training. Some will argue that the difference between Phelps in 2000 and Phelps 2008 is eight years of training. I'd say you are partly right, but to me, the bigger issue is physical development - a fifteen year old boy finishing fifth in the wold, no matter how physically developed, is clearly marked for great things very early on in their career, long before 10,000 hours are accumulated.

Missy Franklin is equally telling. At 16, she won 3 gold medals (and five medals in total) in swimming in Shanghai recently. And she failed to even qualify for the US Olympic Trials at 13, only three years before. So her rise has been, to put it mildly, meteoric, and her arrival as a the best of the elites, precedes 10,000 hours by a long way.

My question to advocates of a "genes are less important model, it's about training" is how does this athlete become a world champion at 16 and with relatively little training, whereas thousands and thousands of others, who train maybe more than she does and over a longer period, will never even make the USA team for swimming? In fact, the question should always be turned around - don't ask why some succeed, rather ask why most fail? For every example of a champion, there are thousands who get the same training, the same opportunity, but fail to even make national level, let alone become a world champion. Why? The answer to this question, and the question of why the likes of Missy Franklin succeed, is genetics and INNATE TALENT. As mentioned, more on this next time.

Innate ability as a catalyst for training: The alternative theory

Finally, let's go back to the violin study and let me suggest a possible alternative theory for why the best expert performers tend to train more.


Ericsson concludes that these children just accumulate more training time and that this explains performance. The difference between the "best experts" and the "least accomplished players" is the training time.

But what if it is exactly the other way around? Let's take two children at nine years old. Do they have the same ability to play on first exposure? Ericsson's model says yes, and that the difference comes later, when one child practices more, gets better teaching. But what if the difference is present from the very first note, the first exposure to the activity? The parents of a child who shows some ability encourage further practice, they invest in teaching and training, and this child, by virtue of the fact that he/she has more ability to begin with, accumulates more practice.

But the child who has little innate ability makes the violin sound like the death march of stray cats, and their parents do not encourage more play. In fact, they discourage it - the "go play outside" syndrome takes over, and the child is never exposed to teaching or practice. His trajectory is set precisely because he has less innate ability.

My point is that the above graph can be explained just as easily using an innate ability argument as it can a deliberate practice argument. The current explanation is been practice, but given what we know about genes, I'd argue that the 're-inforced' behaviour catalyst/filter explanation is just as likely. Those who display greater ability early on (innate ability, that is) are encouraged to practice more, and they set out on that journey towards "best expert" levels, the yellow line, from the beginning. Those who lack innate ability are placed on the blue line. No amount of training will change this, but the behaviour is set early so we never find this out. The result is that ability is determined by practice, on average, but that practice volumes are perhaps themselves influenced by innate ability.

Until someone shows that individual differences in performance can be made to disappear with training, and that the differences we measure in performance are not present from the outset, I remain skeptical about an extremist view of performance being due to one factor.

The importance of practice: Practice is vital, but extremist arguments just don't work

Now, I don't mean to be dismissive of the importance of training. Of course, practice is vital. It is a pre-requisite for success, especially when you have a competitive sport where many are vying for the same medal. In that situation, the person who succeeds must train hard. But their ability to get more out of training, to adapt to training and also to start off from a higher "baseline" is just as important, and those are factors influenced by genes, as I'll cover in the next post on this topic.

To argue that it's about the training, and to dismiss that genetics play a significant role, is to adopt an untenable and grossly oversimplified position. The 10,000 hour concept is a nice motivational tool, a way to encourage more training, to inspire people to improve. The idea for elite performance is that the right person hears this and believes, and then does the training. But to attribute success to 10,000 hours of training is not only over-simplified, it's wrong. Matthew Syed, in the clip above, says that one will argue that you "need both talent and opportunity, but that's not what the science is saying".

The truth is, the science is saying exactly that. Make no mistake - producing champions is incredibly complex. The success of Kenya at distance running, or of Jamaica in sprinting, cannot be reduced to one, or even a few factors. You will find altitude in many places. You will find socio-economic similarities all over the world. But you won't find champions.

Success is probably due to hundreds of different factors, all interacting with one another. But the end result is that if you take 100 aspirant athletes in Kenya, and 100 aspirant athletes in the USA, and expose them to the same training, you will not see anything like the same success rate. And that is due to genetic differences that are too complex to discover with the approach that has been adopted so far.

In this post, I've looked at the training and practice factor, and hopefully given a broader view on it than the terribly simplified version that 10,000 hours is what it takes. Next time, the genes, and the very certain finding that genetics is vital, both in determining innate ability, and our response to training, and even our motivation or desire to exercise and train in the first place.

Ross
The Science of Sport Dr. Ross Tucker Dr. Jonathan Dugas


Iata ca nici Mastershii nu au scapat...;

Use age as motivation not an excuse

Friday, August 12, 2011 11:09 AM
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Sports Performance Bulletin

Introducing the Ageless Athlete…

The elite individual who doesn't accept decreased performance as a symptom of age. Who doesn't accept that he is past his personal best.


 Ageless Athlete

"Six years ago I thought I had reached the end of my running career. I was constantly suffering at the hands of a knee injury, and my times had dropped considerably. My body seemed like it was just giving up. I felt old and I'd lost the one thing that had kept me running for over thirty-five years: motivation.

Since reading The Ageless Athlete I have been able to pin point problem areas in my training and my body has started to recover. What's more, my confidence has grown and I wake up everyday anticipating the day's training. As a result I have reduced my 100m time by 0.7 seconds, my 200m time from 29.5 to 26.5 and my 400m time from 66.3 to 60.8… I'm now beating competitors half my age."
Lionel Frost, Runner, 51 years old

This guy is special. His dedication to sport is not affected by his age. If anything he uses it as his motivation and not an excuse.

He knows that knowledge, coupled with years of training experience, provides him with the power to reach the pinnacle of his sporting career even though he is entering his fifties. And he certainly isn't afraid to compete with athletes half his age, because he knows he can match them step for step… he knows that he can BEAT them.

Dear Mircea colleague,

I know that Lionel isn't alone. There are thousands of you out there, for whom sport is as much a part of your life today as it was when you left school. But many of you just can't seem to get the results you used to from your training programme. You acknowledge that with age comes decreased performance. It's the body's natural way of slowing down. Right?

Wrong!

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This is an invaluable resource for any sports enthusiast over the age of forty and I genuinely believe that it will help athletes like you shake off long standing beliefs that age is a debilitating illness that puts an end to a sporting career. After all, each volume contains case studies of real athletes who have committed themselves to sporting excellence throughout their lives and see age as no reason to quit.

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  • Part 1 - Training for Master Athletes - individual retail value $44.99
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  • Part 3 - Speed Development for Masters - individual retail value $44.99
  • Part 4 - Endurance Training for Masters - individual retail value $44.99

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Publisher, Peak Performance

p.s. If you want to discover the true value of The Ageless Athlete read on. It will change your attitude towards the sports performance vs. age quandary forever.

How to Beat the Ageing Process

With recent leaps in research funding, great advances have been made in our understanding of the ageing process. And with this understanding comes the ability to counter its effects. Here is some background:

As we get older, the rate of cell division slows down and some tissues begin to perform less efficiently. There is a loss of elasticity, both in the skin and in ligaments. There is a decline in the maximum heart rate and in maximum power output. The questions answered in The Ageless Athlete include:

  • How early do these changes set in?
  • What can we do to reverse the process?
  • What performances should we expect at a certain age?

If this process is left unchecked, nature will take its course. However, with the right kind of training and nutrition it is possible to remain at international level to the age of 40 – as witness Eamonn Coghlan's sub-four-minute miles, Al Oerter's record in the discus and the victories of the 42-year-old Podkopayeva at 1500 metres in 1994.

In events involving pure endurance, the limits can be extended for longer. The world's best for a marathon at the age of 50 stands at 2:11, a time that would win many international marathons.

Learning from the Masters

As we explain, there is no doubt that the average person (that is to say, an unfit person) can reverse most of the effects of ageing by using the right exercise programmes. The person who has kept fit will always be younger, in the physiological sense, than his real age.

Runners, for example, can maintain the times they ran as a 19-year-old.

On the other hand, a runner's flexibility and muscle strength, apart from the leg muscles, will decline considerably if they fail to work on them.

The Three Lessons

What are the implications of this for the average sportsman?

First, there is no reason to stop purely because of age, because the decline is very gradual. The right kind of training and some good conditions can enable you to improve on last year's times.

Second, one cannot train with the intensity of a young athlete because the rate of regeneration is not as fast. You have to find the intensity and the frequency of hard training that you can tolerate. We show you how it's done.

Third, it will probably become necessary, if you seriously want to stay as fit and healthy as possible, to work on your weak points. Muscular strength, flexibility and mobility decline without the right exercise.

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The Ageless Athlete combines four volumes that cover the entire spectrum of sports science for Masters. Please read on for an in-depth look at the four cornerstones of your future success.

Training for Master Athletes


 Training for Master Athletes

This workbook belongs on everyone's reading list, no matter what age they are. Readers will find it an effective and proven antidote to the ageing process.

Why this isn't your usual off-the-shelf best seller!
All the examples given in this new workbook, and some defy belief, are based on scientific research.

As you know, this kind of sports and medical research costs a great deal of money. We have access to the papers, however, and have analysed and adapted them for the novice runner at a nominal cost. And they make fascinating reading.

The workbook has been prepared by the Peak Performance team of experts, including physiologists, nutritionists and master athletes.

It covers a comprehensive range of subjects with one principal aim in mind: how to overcome the consequences of getting older and still produce winning performances, stay healthy and, most importantly, continue to enjoy yourself.

‘I can't perform as well as I used to'
Readers of this new workbook will discover this does not have to be true! We give a host of examples that belie these attitudes:

  • A 70-year-old weight-lifter is stronger than the average 30-year-old
  • The ballet dancer of 70 is more flexible than the average young adult
  • The 70-year-old marathon runner will easily outrun the majority of 30-year-olds.

Such people owe their achievements not to the fact that they were outstanding when they were younger but to the fact that they have continued to practise the activity that they enjoy.

They are determined, and have the knowledge. This gives them the ability to continue into old age.

Here is a breakdown of the subjects covered in Training for Master Athletes:

Chapter 1: How old is old?: A top sports scientist asks: ‘Is the ageing process inevitable – or simply the result of "detraining"?'

Chapter 2: Personal experience: ‘I am now running, at 59, the sort of times I was running as a 19-year-old National Serviceman'

Chapter 3: Nutrition for older athletes: These are the best foods and supplements to protect your joints from age-related degeneration

Chapter 4: How to keep up to speed: The bad news is that speed declines with age; the good news is that you can arrest and even reverse this process

Chapter 5: How to stay flexible: A sports physiotherapist shows why flexibility is so important to keep ageing at bay, and explains the science behind it

Chapter 6: Nutritional supplements: Could ALA and ALC combine to form the Elixir of Life for ageing athletes?

Chapter 7: What the scientists say: How fitness protects the ageing brain...

Chapter 8: What the scientists say: ... and improves memory in mid-life

Chapter 9: What the scientists say: Power vs. endurance: what goes first in the ageing stakes?

Chapter 10: What the scientists say: Bone maintenance in older runners

Chapter 11: What the scientists say: Older athletes actually reduce the risk factors for heart disease

Chapter 12: What the scientists say: This exercise regime will boost bone density and lean muscle mass

Chapter 13: What the scientists say: Why the muscles shrink with age – and what to do about it

Chapter 14 – What the scientists say: Do the young respond more effectively to aerobic training? Don't you believe it!

Chapter 15 – What the scientists say: And finally, here's a group of elderly hour-a-day exercisers who are aerobically 30 years younger

Speed Development for Masters

Speed Development for Masters

There are many athletes in their 40s, 50s and even older who are faster and can perform better than people in their supposed prime. These are incredible performances achieved at a time in life when the body may be protesting just a little bit and when there are often many competing demands on time. You need discipline, dedication and determination to keep going.

But it is a big mistake to train like a 20-year-old at 40. Speed Development for Masters is John Shepherd's insightful guide to training for speed, written specifically for veterans, so you can get that extra edge against the competition.

Among the invaluable knowledge you will take away from this book is:

  • Learn how speed naturally declines with age and what you can do about it
  • Determine the specific dietary requirements for older athletes
  • Find out ways you can reduce your chances of injury through pre-conditioning techniques
  • Understand the role weight-training and plyometrics play in building speed
  • Learn the best ways to hone your sprinting technique for optimum performance
  • Uncover the secrets of mental training for athletes who compete at Masters level

Speed Development for Masters is a rare opportunity to assess the latest speed training thinking for yourself and decide how best to integrate it into your daily and weekly routines.

Want to know more? Here is a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of everything you will find in this essential resource:

Chapter 1: How speed declines with age

Chapter 2: Preconditioning against injury

Chapter 3: Warming up and stretching for speed

Chapter 4: The role of weight training

Chapter 5: Plyometric and agility training

Chapter 6: Optimum sprinting technique

Chapter 7: Boost your speed with mental training

Chapter 8: The best diet for speed

Chapter 9: Your speed-training plan

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Endurance Training for Masters


 Edurance training for masters

Written by Bruce Tulloh, a long distance runner and award winning, record-breaking athlete for 60 years, Endurance for Masters is the first sports book of its kind – the only sports reference to meet the specific information needs of masters-level athletes wanting to train effectively for maximum endurance.

If you want to compete with people half your age – and have a good chance of winning – you need to be an endurance athlete! The central importance of stamina is increasingly recognised in a variety of other sports, particularly those involving bursts of running (e.g. football, basketball and rugby) or lengthy matches (e.g. tennis). That's because a lack of stamina not only hampers your physical performance, it can cause you to make technical or tactical errors, whatever your age, as increasing tiredness affects your mental alertness and reaction times.

You'll discover a host of training tips and schedules for a wide variety of sports, not just the conventional so-called endurance sports like marathon running, road cycling and rowing, but also golf, basketball, rugby, football and a range of racquet sports too. Here is just some of what you will learn from this invaluable resource:

  • Determine how much of your weekly training should be endurance-specific
  • Find out what does you more good – a two-hour run or two one-hour runs
  • Learn how certain types of endurance training can help you alter your muscle type
  • Discover the right way to do strength training for maximum endurance
  • Determine your optimal nutrition and hydration as a Master athlete
  • Find out what type of endurance training is needed for your particular sport

Read Endurance Training for Masters and you'll find out not only the right way to train for maximum endurance, and the principles behind the training, but also how training for endurance can improve your health and enrich your life.

Chapter by chapter, here is what you will find in this fantastic guide from the veteran running guru Bruce Tulloh:

Chapter 1: What is endurance?

Chapter 2: Age and performance

Chapter 3: The role of endurance in sports

Chapter 4: Nutrition and endurance

Chapter 5: Training for endurance

Chapter 6: Endurance training by sport

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Running for Masters: Starting Out

Running for Masters

Running for Masters: Starting Out tells you everything you need to know to get the best out of your running. Designed for all ability and commitment levels, from those taking up running from scratch, to the more experienced runner looking to looking to increase your weekly mileage in anticipation of running your first sub-4.30 marathon! This is a concise, to the point 117-page guide that you can read in an evening, yet it encapsulates everything you need to know about achieving your athletic best as a Masters runner! Here is just some of the knowledge you'll take away from this invaluable guide, exclusively available in a convenient PDF download:

Find out a foolproof way for newbie runners to shed those excess pounds safely and permanently

  • Determine which running style is right for you
  • The thirteen most effective techniques to help Master athletes avoid sports injury
  • Vary your training while working different aspects of fitness
  • Get tips on what to do when life gets in the way of your training schedule
  • Find out some DIY check-ups for your pulse rate, blood pressure, and cholesterol level

Here is a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of the information in this fantastic guide:

Introduction - What running can do for you

Chapter 1 - How fit are you?

Chapter 2 - Your life as a runner

Chapter 3 - Your pre-running programme

Chapter 4 - Kit and equipment

Chapter 5 - Running for beginners

Chapter 6 - Running faster

Chapter 7 - Basic seasonal running programmes

Chapter 8 - When injury strikes

Chapter 9 - Moving up and moving on

Appendix 1 - Sprint drills

Appendix 2 - Weight training

Appendix 3 - Core stability exercises

Appendix 4 - Loosening and stretching