Very often the term variability is used to indicate things that change within one or more training sessions or between one mesocycle and another.
In my work with elite athletes as well as amateur athletes, I have set myself the goal of looking for useful parameters to verify the progress of the proposed training path.
I am a firm believer that assessment tests are the basis of my work and are very useful both to motivate the person I train and to question my programming proposal.
Hence the need to find a term that is easy to understand and that summarizes what I want to represent with the numbers that come out of each assessment test.
Many years ago, creating an evaluation protocol for athletes useful for their classification for an International Federation, I went in search of a terminology that was easily understood by those who saw the test I was proposing for the first time.
Thus was born the term: "variability"
With this term I want to represent the percentage difference that passes between a maximum performance and the average performance.
I'll give an example to be clearer:
we think of doing a series of 8 repetitions and we are going to measure a parameter which can be the speed of movement, or the watts produced, or the stroke of the movement.
With eight data we get an average of the value that was achieved in the series. I compare this average with the maximum performance within the series.
Take for example the watts produced.
The 8 repetitions generate the following values: 825; 867; 912; 874; 852; 863; 899; 822 with an average of 864.25. The peak performance was 912 for which the varibility is 0.95. The more this figure approaches 1, the more it means that the series was carried out with a certain consistency.
How I use this parameter: the search for the right load to obtain a correct training stimulus from that training and that exercise must be done considering the variability parameter.
If the variability is far from 1, the subject probably has the strength to move that load but not to manage it; the ensuing effect is a great dispersion of the stimulus that must generate the adaptation.
If the variability is close to 1, it means that you can increase the load having a good chance that what we can define training effectiveness increases.
I take this parameter into consideration in all phases of training periodization.
This topic is present in the training courses related to programming and physical preparation that will be presented shortly.
If you want to know more, contact me through the site or subscribe to the news letter.
