Chapter 13 - Testing

Abstract

It is extremely important to know as much as possible about our athletes and teams, and the requirements that are necessary to be successful in a given sport. Without knowing what happens with (in) the athlete’s body during a 400m race or a marathon run, we cannot create a proper training program. Without understanding the force that must be available in order to throw the hammer to 80m, how can we design appropriate exercise sessions? Without being able to see the metabolic demands of soccer, handball, basketball, or fencing, how can we instruct players to enhance performance during training? Knowing that in freestyle wrestling the heart rate in the third period of the 2-min, fight is around 90% of the maximum and the blood lactate concentration increases up to 11–12mmol/L gives us important information to set up the proper intensity of exercise loading. Without testing, how can we be sure that the goals of different periodization units have been achieved and we don’t have to make modifications to the program? It is relatively clear that we need continuous feedback from the athletes, and testing is important to evaluate the quality of coaching decisions, which should be based on the test results and the athlete’s feedback. It is not easy to select the most appropriate tests, because tests must correlate well with certain components of the performance. Most of the tests which are used to measure strength, endurance, or speed components should be technically simple and easy to learn, otherwise the quality of technical execution limits the application of the test. Furthermore, it is also important to provide very similar conditions, such as time, temperature, and motivational, nutritional, and resting levels, because without these the results would be dependent on too many alternatives and not be comparable.