The Science of Maximal Athletic Development: Proposed Table of Contents

As it turns out, ‘maximal athletic development’ is quite a broad topic :)

Below you’ll find a first draft of the areas that I would like to cover in this book.

I definitely welcome feedback and comments from subscribers as to areas that I might have missed or topics that you would like me to cover in more depth. As I said in my first post, my chief aim here is to come up with a practical guide that outlines my thought process in working with an athlete from beginning to end that I’ve developed over my life as a sports scientist/coach and, just as importantly, one that enables other coaches or self-coached athletes to directly incorporate what they find useful within their own approach.

With that in mind, here is the initial outline of what I would like to cover…

I  The Warm-Up

• The importance of living an ‘athletic life’ (culture, health, society)

•  First, Principles – Maximize fitness while staying healthy and feeling good!

• Adding the Science to Maximal Athletic Development: Making effective use of data (and code).

II Training: The science of maximizing fitness

• The Foundation of Fitness: Building a Strong Base
                  The golden triangle - Aerobic + Strength + Basic Speed (good for all!)
                  - High ANS fitness = fast recovery
                  - High metabolic fitness (fat oxidation)

• Specialization: Fine-tuning your fitness for a fast race!

•  Lab and field testing I: Everything you need to know about Training Zones

•   Lab and field testing II: Athlete profiling - Where are you strong, where are you weak with regards to your level of development and your event?

  -       Case study: Lactate data of a Tour De France contender

• Lab and field testing III: Body composition testing - identifying optimal body composition for different athletes and events.

•   Assessing individual training response: An introduction to Dose-response models*: What type of athlete are you? What type of  training do you respond to?

  *with supplementary Python code for those interested in diving deeper.

• The Long Term Development Plan: Expected improvement and benchmarks through the years.

•   The Annual Plan: Periodizing your year to maximize response and address strengths and weaknesses wrt phase of development and different events.

• The Training Session: The base loading unit
  
  

III Recovery: The science of staying healthy & feeling good!

•  Monitoring recovery from training – HRV & Readiness markers

•   Maximizing response and recovery from training: Training Intensity

•   Maximizing response and recovery from training: Nutrition (including fat ox and CGM data)

•   Maximizing response and recovery from training: Sleep & Stress management

IV Daily/Weekly Planning: The science of optimally balancing each

• Improvement = Optimal Loading + Optimal Recovery

• Short term recovery: The benefits of dynamic loading through the week (reference to Vesterinen etc)

• Long term recovery: Dynamically loading through the year and athlete lifespan

• Optimization models*
  *with supplementary Python code for those interested in diving deeper.

V Racing: The science of getting the most out of the fitness you bring to the start line on the most important day!

• Energy pacing your race (including the use of real-time data to optimally pace)

• Optimal race selection & maximizing your performance in different environments – hills, heat, humidity, altitude

VI Case studies

• The journey to World Champ

• Maximizing “bang for your buck” for the time-crunched athlete

• Long term development for youth athletes (& those with a ‘youthful’ training age)

• Considerations for the “older” athlete.

I welcome all subscriber suggestions on any areas that you think might be missing or areas that you would like to see in more depth (please add to the comments section below). Fundamentally, this book is for you!