Top Endurance

Training programs are traditionally used by competitive athletes to maximize training effectiveness and performance improvement. However, any well-designed training program can also be useful for noncompetitive and recreational athletes, allowing these athletes to maximize enjoyment and minimize the risk of injury or overtraining. To measure the effectiveness of an endurance training program, regular testing should be done. The testing may be performed in a laboratory setting, but field testing is usually more convenient for both the coach and the athletes. Ideally, testing should include measures for movement analysis, aerobic endurance, and muscle endurance. This chapter reviews some common testing protocols and the methods used to analyze the data collected during the testing sessions.

Testing for the sake of testing will not provide any guidance for a coach or athlete. For any tests conducted, the information gathered should be used to provide feedback to the athlete. Too often coaches and exercise physiologists ask athletes to perform extremely taxing tests and evaluations but fail to effectively communicate the results of those tests to the athlete. The information gained in testing sessions needs to be shared with the athlete in a timely manner and then used to guide changes in training.

Before conducting any testing, the coach needs to properly calibrate any testing equipment. All equipment used for testing should be maintained and calibrated according to the manufacturer’s recommendations. Testing conducted with equipment that is not calibrated or is incorrectly calibrated will result in data that are not valid or reliable. If the analysis of a training program’s effectiveness is based on data that are not valid or reliable, then the analysis will be flawed.