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Decathlon coaches usually spend days or even weeks on designing training schedules for their athletes. A major complication is the fact that the athlete has only limited time for an extensive range of training exercises, whereas the effects of exercises on the athlete's performance in the various events are interrelated. This paper presents a mathematical model for optimizing the use of the total available training time by assigning time to training exercises. The data used in this time capacity planning model concerns a decathlete preparing for the Olympic Games.
Subject classifications: recreation and sports; applications; nonlinear programming; decision-support systems; information systems.
Area of review: OR Practice.
History: Received April 2007; revisions received August 2007, January 2008; accepted January 2008. Published online in Articles in Advance March 24, 2009.
(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)
1. Introduction
Stemming from the ideal image of the well-balanced, all-round athlete in the days of the ancient Greeks, the decathlon is a competition in which athletes compete in 10 track and field events spread out over two days. The first day consists of 100 meters sprint, long jump, shot-put, high jump, and 400 meters. On the second day, athletes compete in 110 meters hurdles, discus, pole vault, javelin, and 1,500 meters. A characteristic difficulty for decathletes and multievent athletes in general is that the athlete cannot focus on each event separately: there is simply not enough time to perfect each single event. Compromises have to be made; the athlete has to make sacrifices in terms of performance in the events he is best at to keep losses for the other events as small as possible. An important question for any decathlete and his coach is how to design a training schedule that provides the best preparation for competitions to keep these compromises as small as possible and to perform as well as possible.
The importance and difficulty attached to designing training schedules is clear from the fact that decathlon coaches spend days or even weeks on designing training schedules. Only athletes with well-balanced training schedules can reach the top and be competitive at this level. The differences within top-level athletics are so marginal that, regardless of how minor, it is important to take every opportunity that can improve performance.
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