Ed Coughlan: So, how do you peak for an Olympic Games?

Simone Biles of the United States during a training session at the Ariake Gymnastics Arena ahead of the Olympics. Picture: Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile

The fact that the Tokyo 2020 Olympics is taking place in 2021 tells us all we need to know about the level of disruption that has hit every aspect of these Games. For some, they should have been pushed back for another year. As the migration of thousands of people from so many different countries with such diverse interpretations of how to handle Covid-19 is seen as nothing short of misguided, for a sports event.

For others these next few weeks is the culmination of a life’s work, which under normal circumstances is enough to set the heart racing. However, the last year has seen additional duress of extensive quarantine camps and training in isolation for months.

It is all about to come to an end in the largest pandemic bubble to date. The records will likely show Tokyo 2020 as the time and place in the history books albeit with an asterisk to remind us that even the Olympics had to play second fiddle this time around.

One thing this year’s Games will showcase is the adaptability of athletes, coaches, and administration staff. Best laid plans were in place for July 2020 only to be moved by 12 months on short enough notice, no doubt for all the right reasons, but the upheaval cannot be underestimated from an athletic perspective.

Preparation for the Olympics begins shortly after the closing ceremony. So for the vast majority of those arriving in Tokyo over the last fortnight, the planning for this trip has been in the works since August 2016, in Rio.

Most people are aware of the SMART acronym, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-oriented, or some catchy alternative to describe the type of goal-setting that is encouraged if we want to increase the likelihood of achieving some target we set for ourselves. We are advised to be specific in what we want to achieve, the thinking is that the more exact we are about what we want, the more focused our attention will be on the end goal.

Next, we need to engage in measurable tasks so that progression or lack thereof can be tracked. In the data-driven age we are now experiencing, this has become a science all of its own. Monthly, weekly, even daily progressions are now possible. Such up-to-date, real-time feedback can have a significant impact on the session planning of an athlete – in the right hands.

Data in the wrong hands can lead to impatient coaching and confused even injured athletes. Behaviour change takes time and all the data in the world will not change that fact. But when an Olympics is looming coaches can get itchy fingers with the training plan and begin to squeeze too much out of too little time.

Whatever the goals are, they need to be achievable. They need to be something that is within the reach of the athlete, maybe not immediately, but over the lifespan of the training plan. Achieve them too soon, and you’re back to the drawing board. Achieve them on time, in the right competition, at the right place, and dreams become a reality. Athletes have reported that the most motivated they’ve been is when they’re pushing for something that is just beyond, but not too far beyond their current ability. This type of environment makes sacrifice seem like an investment.

Coupled with achievable goals are realistic goals. Pie-in-the-sky thinking is not only the stuff of dreams, but it is also where dreams will stay - out of reach. Realistic goals usually emerge from heart-to-heart chats between athletes and their coaches. Once identified, they can bring a clarity of purpose to training.

Proper goals

Finally, proper goals are often time-oriented. This again focuses the effort on hitting certain markers at pre-determined timepoints. A built-in feedback loop to determine the success or failure of the training programme. No place are time-oriented goals more apparent than for an Olympic Games. The dates are set in the diary years in advance, which further heightened the disruption for those readying themselves for action 12 months ago.

The shift in focus amid such upheaval must have been incredibly challenging. On the one hand, athletes and their support staff are like everyone else whose focus is on their wellbeing and that of others, especially their loved ones. On the other, we are dealing with a particularly driven, self-motivated, oftentimes self-centered and selfish group of people, who are accustomed to others, again, typically their loved ones, making huge sacrifices on their behalf.

Athletes have existed in a bubble long before the pandemic bubble we now speak of, and when things don’t go to plan, they’re like the rest of us, disappointed and frustrated, just maybe on a more intense level. The capacity to reset and go again is difficult at the best of times, but to do it when the timeframe was unsure must have been all but impossible for some.

The preparation for an Olympics follows some straightforward steps. Along with appropriate goal-setting, there are cycles of training and performing to ensure arrival at the Games coincides with a peak in performance.

Terms like macro-cycle, meso-cycle, and micro-cycle are commonplace in long-term coaching plans. Over the 4 year period between Games, an athlete can expect to go through 4 macro-cycles, but the actual length is something that is personal to each group. For example, in this instance, each macro-cycle can be an annual run through of what will happen on the Olympic year, with training camps, test events and periods of tapering to determine how the body responds to the rigours of training to compete.

Within each macro-cycle are a series of meso-cycles, which in this example could total 6 bi-monthly time periods. A meso-cycle is used to measure the effectiveness of more medium term goals and determine whether the current training load is sufficient to induce the desired performance effects.

Within each meso-cycle are a series of micro-cycles, which to finish out this example could be weekly or fortnightly reviews to accumulate short-term data from the athlete’s response to acute bouts of training and possibly changes in conditions of training, such as temperature changes at a warm weather training camp or altitude changes at a mountain base for hypoxic work.

All of this work is reverse engineered from the date of your event four years ahead and none of it is set in stone, even in a normal Olympic cycle. The information from each micro-cycle informs the meso-cycle which informs the macro-cycle.

Possibly the most important part of the whole process is the test events that lead up to a Games, a sport’s National, European and World championships which normally happen in the interim period. However, for some sports some of these events have been consumed by the Covid-19 juggernaut, and athletes are arriving in Tokyo with little more than in-house competition to ready themselves for what was supposed to be the biggest moment in their sporting lives.

Let’s remember the toil these men and women have endured as they provide us with entertainment like no other over the next few weeks.

For some their dreams have already come through, for others, a gold medal is all that will do.