Long Term Athletes Selection and Orientation at the Olympic Sport Contemporary Stage of Development

 

Oksana Shynkaruk1, Oleksandr Krasilshchikov2

1 National University of Ukraine of Physical Education and Sport, UKRAINE

2 Universiti Sains Malaysia, MALAYSIA

 

Corresponding Author: Oksana Shynkaruk, shi-oksana@ukr.net

 

Abstract.

Purpose of the study: To justify and present organizational and managerial model of long term athletes’ selection and orientation system.

Research methods included: Longitudinal studies and practical work experience with teams an individuals in various sports, analysis of scientific and methodological literature, observations, pedagogic interventions, expert assessments, and statistical analysis. Participants of the study included 24 elite athletes – Ukraine National teams’ members; athletes belonging to basic training stage and the ones approaching top performance stage: 256 16-20 years of age canoers and kayakers; 30 16 to 18 years of age track and field athletes; 104 14-16 years old fencers of and 47 of 17-22 years old fencers; 158 children belonging to mass school sports and from the initial training stage and 299 parents. Apart from that, respondents included 41 lead canoeing and kayaking coaches and 45 fencing coaches. Bio data of 3771 Olympic champions and medal winners in 9 sports from 1956 - 1976 and 1988 - 2016 Olympics was analysed as well.

Results: Projected long term selection and orientation system targeting the achievement of top performance in the Olympic Games includes three tiers: training, selection and orientation of the distant reserves; training, selection and orientation of the close reserves; training and selection to the National teams and orientation. The trend in the contemporary sport is that the age of the major international competitions winners is on the rise. On the other hand there is a discrepancy between the age of the Youth Olympics’ participants and the age of first great success in contemporary top performance sports. This is clearly seen while comparing the Youth Olympics age group and the age of first great success of the current Olympic champions and medal winners.

Hence the age of enrolment in sports, the age of the first great success and the age of maximal realisation of sports potential are among the valid criteria for selection and prospects’ assessment of an athlete long term career.

Conclusion: The proposed athletes’ long-term selection and orientation organizational and managerial model is associated with formation of the maximal realisation of a particular athlete natural aptitudes training system. Long-term athletic career should be associated with the longitudinal system of athletes’ selection and orientation; the age ranges for high performance longevity in contemporary sports need scientific justification.

Keywords: long-term training, selection, orientation, sport reserves, age groups.

 

Introduction

Contemporary Sports features effective system of training being developed in many countries which emerged due to intense commercialization and professionalization of sport and to the increased social and political weightage of success in both summer and winter Olympics (Oakley and Green, 2001; Green and Houlihan, 2005; Yamamoto, 2008; Shynkaruk, Dutchak and Pavlenko, 2013). This in turn significantly increased the competition internationally.

Such developments determined the focus of Olympic sport related research in the past decades. Those include issues of optimizing long-term training and annual periodization (Bompa and Carrera M., 2005; Dunbar, 1991; Issurin, 2008; Platonov, 2013; Kostiukevych et al., 2018, 2019), youth athletes’ training (Matveev, 2001; Volkov, 2002).

Stable growth of records and intensified due to increased numbers of commercial tournaments competition schedules much intensified athletes’ training and competing activities and seriously increased the loads to bear by the human body in elite sport (Shynkaruk, 2011; Bouchard, 1992, Brown, 2001). That triggered the necessity to research into talent identification and selection.

Special attention is paid to sports orientation allowing to explore athletes’ predisposition (aiming for early diagnostics) to achieve top performance in particular disciplines and events (Shynkaruk, 2011).

The purpose of the study was to justify and present organizational and managerial model of long term athletes’ selection and orientation system.

 

Material & methods.

Research methods included longitudinal studies and practical work experience with teams an individuals in various sports, analysis of scientific and methodological literature, observations, pedagogic interventions, expert assessments, and statistical analysis (Byshevets, N. at all,2019).

Participants of the study included 24 elite athletes – Ukraine National teams’ members; athletes belonging to basic training stage and the ones approaching top performance stage: 256 16-20 years of age canoeists and kayakers; 30 16 to 18 years of age track and field athletes; 104 14-16 years old fencers of and 47 of 17-22 years old fencers; 158 children belonging to mass school sports and from the initial training stage and 299 parents.

Apart from that, respondents included 41 lead canoeing and kayaking coaches and 45 fencing coaches. Bio data of 3771 Olympic champions and medal winners in 9 sports from 1956 - 1976 and 1988 - 2016 Olympics was analysed as well.

 

Results end Discussion.

Own research (Shynkaruk O., 2011, 2012) and analysis of elite athletes’ training clearly demonstrates that contemporary sport has defined organizational-managerial pattern of athletes’ long term selection and orientation system. That selection system consists of numerous long term training stages whereas selection system is well branched.

While defining and verifying such pattern we have considered three basic positions.

The first position is that sports training has to be treated as a phased long-term enhancement of athletes’ performance level. That works through the linkage between youth sport and top performance sport in order to create preferential conditions for the ones forming perspective reserve through involving most gifted children from sports school in centralized training (Shynkaruk О., 2006).

The diagram presents organizational-managerial design of athletes’ long-term selection and orientation of training system (Fig. 1).

Understanding that long term training system with selection and orientation at its various stages should be presented as a whole, enabled us to visualize certain formational principles of such system. Among those are:

1. Long term training would be aimed at top performance provided:

• The sub-systems of youth sports, reserve sport and elite sport are aligned on the basis of contemporary achievements in sports science;
• Sport selection and orientation should be arranged in the most beneficial manner for both long term training system goals and school (even pre-school) physical education
• Every stage of long term training would be treated equally in terms of focus, funding, equipment, methodical, medical etc. provision; realistic distribution of functions and resources among government and NG organizations in their contribution to training the closest and remote reservists to the national teams.
• The headcount of the involved at long term training various stages is optimal and the system caters for weeding out of less perspective athletes instead inviting the most prospective ones to join;
• The organization and methodology conditions set are beneficial for effective non-conflicting individual development of the selected talents and enable them to effectively realize their abilities while competing eventually towards maximal performance.

2. To maintain the core methodology of athletes’ training through their long term preparation, certain principles have to be followed:

Minimizing pedagogical, psychological and organizational flaws in long-, mid-, short- term and ongoing training;

Continuously monitoring of the state of the athlete’s body systems in the process of performing training and competition loads;

Optimizing (towards minimization) the volumes and intensity of training loads and loads’ dynamics the training process at the stages, periods of sports training and while conducting training sessions;

Preventing injuries and ailments during the periods of intensive training and while participating in competitions.

 

3. Development of sports science and technology in priority areas should be organizational basis for intensification. Among those are:

• the search for new, non-traditional technologies and alternative approaches to improving the structure and increasing the effectiveness of sports training, selection of athletes and their orientation at all stages of long-term development;
• the formation of an effective system of information and analytical support for the development of children-youth, reserve sports and sports of the highest achievements;
• improving the system of training and re-training of personnel on the basis of targeted stimulation of their continuing education and self-education, the formation of the need for sources of systematic information on scientific and technological innovations in the field of their professional activity;
• creation of a user-friendly infrastructure for scientific and technological support for the training of national teams and their reserves on the basis of multi-purpose and sports-specialized centers and mobile groups of scientific and methodological support;
• improvement of regulations on various organizations in which athletes are trained at various stages of long-term improvement, their programs and curricula, performance criteria of organizations and coaches involved in long-term training at its various levels, etc.

 

4. The process of increasing the efficiency of training the remote, closest reserve and national teams is controlled on the basis of the following principles:

• Concentration of efforts of scientists and specialists in promising areas of improving the sports training system;

• Strengthening and developing training infrastructure in youth and reserve sports and sports of the highest achievements.

 

Second position is related to the presentation of the system of long-term improvement in close relationship with the system of selection of athletes and orientation of their training.

Experts are undivided in their opinion that it is impossible to determine an individual predisposition to sporting achievements through any one-time procedures (observation, testing, etc.):

• Firstly, sports inclination is a complex set of individual properties (biophysical and personality-psychic), most of which are not present simultaneously in a given time range, but rather at different times, depending on the age and training age;
• Secondly, the individual abilities for sport achievement and personal aptitudes to achievement realization are dynamic – those vary throughout natural individual development and are influenced by social environment. Thus, the diagnostics of an individual sports predisposition, and hence sports orientation, must be carried out not as a one-time event, but as a phased repeated process.

 

Design of an optimal athlete training system requires primary sports orientation at the initial stage, further refined and completed when the subject makes a choice of thorough sports specialization, with the directions and parameters of further sports activities set as well.

Presumably, in many cases two or three years from the beginning of systematic sports activities in childhood and adolescence is enough to determine the appropriate course of sports specialization and predict sports prospects in first approximation. However, this primary orientation may require significant correction in future. This is especially important when in real life an athlete has to go along with sports professionalization issues.

To ensure the harmony of training, long-term selection and orientation, we suggested the pathways for steady athletic performance growth, based on setting the alignment of predispositions, individual developmental pace, chosen sport specificity, rational training loads at every stage of the long term athletic career (Figure 2).

 

All levels of sport, every long-term improvement stage should be provided with equal emphasis on technical, financial, personnel, scientific, methodological and medical support issues. Concentrating attention only on national teams and insufficient focus on the immediate and remote reserves may inevitably affect the effectiveness of training towards the Olympics.

Every stage of long-term improvement ought to have optimal number of participating athletes: the continuous exit of insufficiently (in terms of the Olympic values) talented athletes, and the influx of talented children.

Application of the prescribed training methodology depends on the parties’ involved and regulatory documents on various organizations which manage athletes’ training at various stages of long-term improvement; including programs, syllabuses, performance indicators for those organizations and coaches involved in Olympic training at its various performance levels.

Fig.2 Orientation of training in athletes throughout long-term career

 

Third position relates to justifying the age ranges projected as likely extension of athletes’ high performance at the final stages of sports career.

As a rule, long-term athlete training begins in childhood and adolescence, progresses depending on the sport and event for about a decade or more and includes basic stages of development and maintenance of master skill. In order to create a construct of the long-term training system, one should rely on typical gender and specialization pattern of athlete development, age of enrolling in sport and age of top performance, training age, required to reach that top performance, and duration of maintenance of performance.

The analysis of the sportsmen’s biographies – the champions and Olympic prize-winners and the world championships and their performance’s results of 1956-1976 and 1996-2016 allowed to get modern information of the beginning of doing sport, age-dependent areas of achievement of the first successes on a sporting arena and age-dependent scopes of the greatest results of sportsmen. For the last decades neither diminishing nor increases of age of beginning of employments was marked by sport. In the number of the most meaningful results of study of optimum age for achievement of the greatest sporting results is an exposure of substantial, in a number of cases cardinal, its differences depending on specialization of sportsmen, a few less size of it for women and, that, probably, requires more detailed consideration. (fig. 3).

Biographies’ analysis of the Olympic champions, medalists and the world championships and their results in 1956-1976 and 1996-2016, revealed information on the beginning of sport enrollment, age-dependent spaces for the first successes and age-dependent spaces of the greatest sport achievements. For the last decades, neither diminishing nor increase in the age of sport enrollment was observed in various sports. Optimal age for top performance greatly depends on the sport, performance contributing factors, is a bit early in females which definitely requires deeper analysis (fig. 3).

Fig 3. Structure of long standing preparation in rowing, kayak and canoe, artistic gymnastics

 

Present trend is the greater age of top competitions winners. It typically shows in cyclic sports (Figure 4). Critical structural changes in the long-term training during the last decades are in the increased age of accomplishing the highest performance; and even more so in the extended duration of maintenance of top performance. Interestingly, both involve bright individual pathways of reaching top performance and especially maintaining it.

As of planning of an athlete’s preparation is concerned, it makes sense to project achieving top performance at optimum age, which differs gender wise, discipline and event wise.

Fig. 4. Structure of long standing preparation in different kinds of sport

 

To make that happen, basic training should be in focus for in many sports that age period covers adolescence which features a-synchronized systems and organs development, adjustments of endocrine system etc. That put together may alter adaptations; affect working capacity, slow down the recovery after training and competitive loads.

Quite worrying in that sense is participation of young, immature athletes in first Youth Olympics 2010 in Singapore in which performing age in most sports was 16 to 17 years.

Comparing athletes’ age while performing in Youth Olympics with age of demonstrating first high achievements of those current champions and medal winners of the Olympic Games, shows some discrepancy between those two age ranges (fig. 5).

Example. Birgit Fischer, Germany: has won 8 Olympic gold medals and an astonishing 28 World Championship titles, her first gold medal at 18-years, 50-years.

Josefa Idem Guerrini, Italy: is a West German-born Italian sprint canoer. Competing in seven Summer Olympics, she has five medals. Winning 35 international medals during her career, Idem was the first Italian woman to win World Championships (22 total, five gold) and Olympic medals in canoe sprint. At the 2009 world championships, she became the oldest medalist in the history of the world championships. Josefa Idem began paddling at the age of eleven.
 

Conclusions

Suggested pattern of long-term selection and orientation of athletes’ training, focused on achieving top performance at the Olympic Games includes three levels:

• Preparation, selection and orientation of the remote reserves;

• Preparation, selection and orientation of the close reserves;

• Training, selection to the national teams and orientation.

Such approach enables both coaches and athletes to focus on specialized training while through the career in top performance sports in order to reach the planned maximum performance in a planned and guaranteed way when it is required.

 

Conflict of interest: Authors state no conflict of interest.

 

References:

Balsevich, V. (2001) The contours of a new strategy of training of athletes of olympic class. Theory and practice of physical culture. N 4. 9-10

Bompa, TO.., & Carrera, M. (2005). Periodization Training for Sports. Champaign. JL. Human Kinetics, 259.

Bouchard, C. (1992). Genetic Determinants of Endurance Performance. Endurance in Sport. Oxford: Blackwell Sci. Publ. 149—159.

Brown, J. (2001). Sport talent. Champaign, Ili Human Kinetics. 300 p.

Byshevets, N., Shynkaruk, O., Stepanenko, O., Gerasymenko, S., Tkachenko, S., Synihovets, I., Filipov, V., Serhiyenko, K., Iakovenko, O. (2019). Development skills implementation of analysis of variance at sport-pedagogical and biomedical researches. Journal of Physical Education and Sport (JPES),, Vol 19 (Supplement issue 6), Art 311 pp 2086 – 2090

Byshevets N., Denysova L., Shynkaruk O., Serhiyenko K., Usychenko V., Stepanenko O., Syvash I. (2019) Using the methods of mathematical statistics in sports and educational research of masters in physical education and sport. Journal of Physical Education and Sport, vol 19 Suppl. Issue 3, 1030 – 1034. DOI:10.7752/jpes.2019.s3148

Carl, K. (1989). New developments in the control and regulation of the training of top level athletes / K. Carl et al. Biology of sport (Warsaw). N 6 (Suppl. 3). 272―275.

Dunbar, J. (1991). Periodisation: plan the perfect peak. Peak performance. London, 12. Р. 1―3.

Fundamentals of research work for higher education graduates in the field of Physical Culture and Sports (2019). For community edit VM Kostyukevich, OA. Shynkaruk. Kyiv: Olympic literature, 2nd form. 613.

Green M. Elite Sport Development systems and playing to win: uniformityand diversity in international approaches’/ M. Green, B. Oakley // Leisure Studies. — London: Brunel University, 2001. — P. 247.

Green, M. Houlihan, B. (2005). Elite Sport Development: Policy Learning and Political Priorities. N. Y.: Taylor & Francis. 387—430.

Horwill, F. (1992) Periodization — plausible or piffle? Modern Athlete and Coach. Adelaide. N 1. 11—13.

Imas Y., Borysova, O., Shlonska, O., Kogut, I., Marynych, V., & Kostyukevich, V. (2017). Technical and tactical training of qualified Volleyball players by improving attacking actions of players in different roles. Journal of Physical Education and Sport, 17, 441-446.

Issurin, V.B. (2008). Block Periodization: Breakthrough in Sport Training. Michigan: Ultimate athlete concept, 213.

Kostiukevych V, Lazarenko N, Shchepotina N, Poseletska K, Stasiuk V, Shynkaruk O, Borysova O., Denysova L, Potop V, Vozniuk T, Dmytrenko S, KulchytskA I, Konnova M, Iakovenko O.(2019). Programming of the training process of qualified football players in the competitive period of the macrocycle. Journal of Physical Education and Sport , Vol 19 (Supplement issue 6), Art 329 pp 2192 – 2199

Kostiukevych, V., Imas, Ye., Borysova, O., Dutchak, M., Shynkaruk, O., Kogut, I., Voronova, V., Shlonska, O., & Stasiuk, I. (2018). Modeling of the athletic training process in team sports during an annual macrocycle. Journal of Physical Education and Sport, 18(1), 327-334. DOI:10.7752/jpes.2018.s144

Kostiukevych, V., Shchepotina, N., Shynkaruk, O., Kulchytska, I., Borysova, O., Dutchak, M., Vozniuk, T., Yakovliv, V., Denysova, L., Konnova, M., Khurtenko, O., Perepelytsia, О., Polishchuk, V., & Shevchyk, L. (2019). Training process construction of the qualified volleyball women players in the preparatory period of two-cycle system of the annual training on the basis of model training tasks. Journal of Physical Education and Sport, 19 (Supplement issue 2), 427-435. DOI:10.7752/jpes.2019.s2063

Lupan, IV, Avramenko AV. (2010). Computer statistical packages: Teach method. guidances. Kirovograd. 218 p.

Matveev, L. (2010). Obshchaia teoriia sporta i ee prikladnye aspekty [General sport theory and its practical aspects], Moscow: Sovetskiy Sport. 333 p

Mujika, I, Padilla, S. (2003). Scientific Bases for Precompetition Tapering Strategies. Med. Sci. Sports Exer. N 35 (7). 1182―1187.

Oakley, B., Green, M. (2001) The production of Olympic champions: International perspectives on elite sport development systems . Eur. J. Sport Management. N 8 (Special Issue). 83―105.

Platonov, VN. (2013). Periodizaciia sportivnoj trenirovki. Obshchaia teoriia i ee prakticheskoe primenenie [Periodization of sports training. General theory and its practical application], Kyiv: Olympic Literature.

Shynkaruk, OA. (2011) The selection of athletes and the orientation of their training in the process of a long-year improvement (on the material of olympic kinds of sports). Kiev. Olympic literature. 360 p.

Shynkaruk, O. (2012). The concept of formation of a system of training, selection of athletes and their orientation in the process of multi-year perfection. Pedagogics, psychology and medical and biological problems of physical education and sports.12. 144-8.

Shynkaruk, O., Dutchak, M., Pavlenko Yu. (2013). Olympic training of athletes in Ukraine: problems and perspectives. Sportivnyi vestnik Prydniprov'ia. 1, 82-6

Shynkaruk, О. (2006). Organizational basis of rational long-term preparation system. European College of Sport Science: Book of Abstracts of the 11th annual congress of the European College of sport science (Lausanne-Switzerland, 5-8 july 2006). ed H. Hoppeler. T. Reilly. Cologne. P. 530.

Volkov, LV. (2002) Theory and methods of children's and youth sports. Kiev. Olympic literature. 294 p

Yamamoto M.Y.-Y. (2008). Japan. Comparative Elite Sport Development: systems, structures and public policy / eds. Barrie Houlihan, Mick Green. Oxford. 53―82.

 

Information of the authors

Oksana Shynkaruk

Professor, Doctor of Science

Chef of Innovation and Information Technologies in Physical Culture and Sports Department National University of Ukraine of Physical Education and Sport, UKRAINE, 03150, 1, Fizcultury st., Kyiv, Ukraine

+380674202019

 

shi-oksana@ukr.net

shi-oksana@gmail.com

 

Oleksandr Krasilshchikov

Professor,

University Sains

Malaysia, MALAYSIA

olek@usm.my