Andy Galbraith, James Hopker and Louis Passfield have recently been working on two connected research studies which were published in the November issue of the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance.
The premise of the first study was to develop a method of assessing an athletes’ critical speed in a field-based environment in a single visit. Critical speed and critical power testing have traditionally been laboratory based measures, often requiring 4-5 repeat visits to the laboratory with at least 24 hours between each visit. Consequently using the original protocols to regularly monitor athletes was a time consuming process. The team validated the new single-visit field approach against a traditional multi visit laboratory approach and demonstrated the test produced valid and reliable values for critical speed. This now paved the way for a longitudinal study using the single-visit test to regularly monitor athletes during a training year.
In the second study, the team monitored a group of highly trained athletes over the course of a year and assessed changes in their critical speed every 6-weeks using the single-visit field test. They also recorded every training session that each athlete conducted during the year using a GPS watch and subsequently analysed this data (totalling over 5000 training sessions!). They were able to demonstrate that the single-visit field test was sensitive enough to detect small but significant changes in the athletes critical speed during the course of the year. The team were also able to identify which training variables (such as distance covered and intensity of the training) lead to the greatest changes in critical speed.
If anyone is interested in reading further information about either of these studies the full text of these articles can be accessed through the library on-line journal search:
Galbraith, A., Hopker, J., Lelliott, S., Did-dams, L., & Passfield, L. (2014). A Single-Visit Field Test of Critical Speed. I nternational Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, 9, 931-935.
Galbraith A, Hopker J, Cardinale M, Cunniffe B, Passfield L. (2014). A One-Year Study of Endurance Runners: Training, Laboratory Tests and Field Tests. International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, 9, 1019-1025.