Basic variables of exercise training

Any physical activity ie. exercse training leads to changes in anatomical, physiological, biochemical and psychological parameters. Exercise training can be determined by several critical variables that are important in terms training planning and analyzing. Those variables are training frequnecy, training volume, training intensity and the type of training. Throughout te training phases preceding a competition, you should define which variable to emphasize in order to achieve your planned goal or performance development.
Training frequency means „how many times?“ did you train. The most common way to plan this number is to use a weekly basis. That means how many trainings you do in one week. Usually if an improvement of fitness would be expected the minimum number of trainings should be 3 in a week. If 2 trainings per week are used, then the fitness/performance level can be maintained. Of course the numbers indicated above depend on the persons´ fitness level.
Training volume is also a quantitative measure of a training. Training volume can be an answer to the question „How much training?“. Training volume may be tracked by following ways:
• The time or duration of the training. This method is probably the most widely used considering the annual training planning.
• Distance covered or weight lifted per unit of time
• The overall repetition of the exercise (ie. in cyclic activities or short burst, high intensive activities ) or technical element that the athlete performs.
The gradual increase in training volume is one of the most important factor of the overall performance of an athlete. If there will be no increases in overall training volume, the athletes can not physiologically adapt further. Usually international level athletes train more than 800 hours per year, while at junior level training volumes might reach 300-500 hours (see Table). Increases in training volumes should not be too high at too young age, otherwise the athlete might suffer overtraining, or the body might accustom with high volumes too early and in the future, when athlete advances there is no room for an additional increase in training volume, since volumes are very high already.