Mid Sweden University

INTRODUCTION: At upper secondary school (USS) with a sport profile, late adolescent athletes choose to specialize in one sport and balance an academic career while they aim to become a top-level athlete. Hence, the aim for this study was to examine the distribution in endurance training volume and intensity in two different performance groups of biathletes during their student-athlete pathway at USS.

METHODS: Retrospective training data of thirty adolescent biathletes (15 men and 15 women) was collected. The training data included training volume (h·y-1) and intensity distribution, using a five-zone model (Seiler, 2010). Inclusion criteria was completion of four years of USS (16 to 19 years old) and with a continued competing in biathlon post USS. The biathletes were grouped based on biathlon performance: that if they during or after USS were selected as a nationalteam biathlete (NTB, n = 9) by the Swedish Biathlon Federation or stayed a national level biathlete (NLB, n = 21). A linear mixed model was fitted for assessing the relationship between performance group and age-group on the training characteristics.

RESULTS: NTB and NLB had equal training volume and intensity distribution at year one, two and three. At year four NTB had a ~30% greater training volume than NLB (594 ± 71 h·y-1 vs 461 ± 127 h·y-1, p = .003) while performing the same number of training sessions (NTB, 359 ± 40 n, NLB, 320 ± 83 n, p = 0.878). There was no difference in training distribution at year one, two and three. At year four the NTB accumulated greater training volume compared to NLB in zone 1 (495 ± 54 vs 387 ± 107, p = .008) and zone 3 (21 ± 12 vs 13 ± 6, p = .019) respectively.  

DISCUSSION/CONCLUSION: This study showed that a greater overall training volume during the last year of USS is of importance to become a NTB compared to NLB. The increased training volume for NTB was distributed in zone 1 and 3. The equal amount of training sessions indicates that NTB trained longer sessions. And speculatively, the greater amount of training volume was performed during non-school hours, because of the dual-career system and structure of the Swedish USS. Accordingly, this study conclude that late adolescent biathletes should increase their training volume, preferably in both zone 1 and in zone 3, outside of their normal USS training for increasing their chance of being selected to a national team.  

REFERENCES:  Seiler, S., 2010. Int J Sports Physiol Perform