The Athlete Stabilization

Antonio Robustelli

In a recent article of mine about recovery, I talked briefly about the concept of “stabilization” in the context of the physical preparation of the athletes. As a result of that article, I was asked by many readers to go deeper into the concept of stabilization and I want to thank Joel Smith for his kind request to host this article on his website.

The concept of stabilization

As I wrote in my previous article, the concept of the “stabilization week” came from the work of Dan Pfaff.

He says that “once you have stimulated (an athlete) and the athlete adapts to that stimulus, then you have to spend a certain amount of time allowing that new performance level to stabilize.” After the stabilization, the athlete must then learn to actualize it in any kind of environment and under any kind of stress, at any point in time.

I think a lot of coaches fall into the trap of stimulating and adapting and as soon as the athlete looks like they have got things under control they then change something and immediately push forwards for greater gains. Unfortunately, in doing so, they can compromise the adaptation process and set the scene for injury.”

I strongly believe that improvement in performance is highly related to improvements in the ability to recover quickly and perform better under any kind of stress.

One step further: stabilization

Biological adaptations occur fundamentally in 6 differents planes:

Structural (muscle proteins, increasing in fiber size, bone)
Neural
Neuromuscular
Biochemical (blood, hormones, enzymes)
Physiological (respiratory system, cardiovascular system, immune system)
Psychological.

We need to stabilize all these systems to properly prevent injuries and maximize performance and adaptations.

To avoid falling into the trap of stimulating and adapting, the process of stabilization involves the quantitative analysis of all these parameters with an advanced biometric approach.

The difference between a high level performer and a low-profile athlete, in the context of the high demands of today’s sport, lies in the possibility to have a well-structured plan aimed to monitoring all the individual responses to training, recovery, nutrition and lifestyle.

Technologies and the biometric approach

Technologies are necessary today to suit the needs of professional athletes and professional clubs, but more important than the understanding of how to use technologies is how to distinguish between useful data and useless data, how to time the use of technologies and finally how to implement them in the training process.

First of all, I like to stress that in my opinion it is of primary importance to make a distinction between “functional assessment” and “skills assessment”.

A functional assessment refers to the analysis of the state of the systems that regulate various physiological, biological and biochemical functions (central nervous system/autonomic nervous system and neuroendocrine system). Skills assessment refers to the assessment of the conditional motor capacities of the athletes (speed, power, strength, aerobic power, muscular endurance, agility etc.).

Besides the stimulation-recovery-adaptation process, it is of fundamental importance, in order to be able to take a step forward in the preparation process, to stabilize all of the following aspects through the implementation of methods for functional assessment:

Structural
Neural
Neuromuscular
Biochemical (blood, hormones, enzyme kinetics and immune system)
Physiological (respiratory system, energy metabolism system)
Emotional/psychological

Structural stabilization

Structural stabilization involves the assessment and analysis of all the properties of the contractile and non-contractile elements of the muscular system (muscles, tendons, ligaments), the assessment of functional symmetry of the feet, the assessment of the muscle mass status and bodyfat (intermuscular and subcutaneous fat), the analysis of blood markers for total testosterone/cortisol ratio (to see where the body is in terms of anabolic/catabolic state) as well as calcium and vitamin D levels.

It is important, in the process of structural stabilization, to monitor bodyfat levels because of the inverse relationship between sympathetic activity and bodyfat.

Neural stabilization

Neural stabilzation involves the assessment of central nervous system function and readiness through the analysis of the brain cortical activity (brain mapping) and cerebellar stress levels in single leg balance standing.

EEG readings, single leg jumping and single leg stabilometric (stabilization) values are of fundamental importance to detect CNS readiness and the ability of neural control of movement.

Neuromuscular stabilization

Neuromuscular stabilization involves the analysis of the muscular activation levels through the ability of stabilize joints in both static and dynamic way. Amplitude and temporal analysis of surface electromyography readings help us to detect the activation time of muscles and the ability to create a good level of neuromuscular stability.

Biochemical stabilization

Biochemical stabilization involves a complete assessment of the most important blood biomarkers for inflammation, minerals level, metabolism, liver function and oxygen.

A complete analysis of blood hormones levels (cortisol, DHEA, free testosterone, SHBG), salivary enzyme kinetics (alpha-amylase) and salivary markers of immune system (ImmunoglobulinsA and IgG) are also necessary.

Physiological stabilization

Physiological analysis involves the measurement of several parameters like resting respiration rate, temperature, blood pressure, heart rate and baroreflex function.

Assessment of RSA (Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia), HRV (Heart Rate Variability) and respiratory rate is able to give us a valuable insight into the efficiency of the cardiorespiratory system.

Emotional/psychological stabilization

Involves the complex analysis of the relationship between EEG activity, heart rate variability and facial microexpressions.

At the end of every 3-months cycle we need to stabilize all these systems to be able to give the athletes the next level of performance. If we have a stabilization at the global level, we are then able to give an athlete to an higher level of stress, therefore actualize all the biological adaptions.

The paradox of recovery rate

As i said many times in the past recovery is a paradoxical process, meaning that we need to further develop knowledge in physiology and biochemistry of human body function. Thanks to the great technological advances available in the market today we now have the opportunity to know what is happening at neuromuscular, biochemical, neural and emotional level even in real-time.

We are able to assess muscle function, functional reserve status and even biochemical trends through hormonal salivary diagnostics. It was unthinkable a few years ago to take and analyze blood and saliva samples directly in the field.

Daily, weekly and monthly monitoring of adaptive responses to training loads become essential as it allow coaches to better manage training for prediction of both injury risks and training adaptations.

The main reason why monitoring could change the way coaches manage training is that it allows us to better understand how adaptation is fixed and stabilized.

Recovery is a whole body, biological process involving regeneration from neural, muscular, metabolic and chemical load. Training adaptations are not stable and require a complex process of storage and fixation within neuro-mechanics and chemical patterns.

In my experience, the most important factor in performance enhancement and recovery monitoring is the proper identification of the weak links of the human body. Recovery patterns are not linear and there are several disturbing elements that can delay and obstruct its path so the identification of these weak links can make a big difference in creating a functional profile baseline from which to analyze the multiple structures and superstructures of which the human biological system is composed.

Antonio Robustelli is a strength and conditioning coach and sport performance consultant from Italy. He works around the world with semi-professionals, professionals, and Olympic athletes in various sports (including athletics, soccer, weightlifting, football, basketball, powerlifting, rugby, volleyball, boxing, hockey, martial arts, and cycling). He is also an expert in the monitoring and management of recovery and physical stress.

He is columnist and writer for the British magazine Athletics Weekly, the world’s number one magazine for track and field, where he writes articles about strength training and answers readers questions in the Strength Issues section.