The Performance Progress Characteristics Of The World-Elite Track-and-Field Athletes

Background: As a basic sport with a long history,high popularity,covering the most individual sports projects and involving all basic human movement and sports skills,Track-and-Field plays an important role in the overall strength of a country's competitive sports.Understanding the characteristics of progress of world-elite Track-and-Field athletes performance can provide our coaches and athletes with references for improving the performance of athletes,and help to predict the athletes performance progress,thus optimize the training plan according to the potential direction of athletes' future competitive development.However,current researches on the performance progress characteristics of world-elite Track-and-Field athletes are still insufficient,the influence of relevant factors such as performance,age,frequency of participation of an athlete have not yet reached a clear conclusion.Purpose: The performance progress characteristics of the world-elite Track-and-Field athletes will be explored,which includes changing characteristics(growth phase increasing rate,decline phase decreasing rate),peak characteristics(career-best performance,age when reaching the peak,peak performance window),and duration features(retirement risk,career lifespan).Specifically,these include: 1)The project and gender features of the performance progress characteristics;2)the relationship between the age,performance and the performance progress characteristics during different career period;3)the influence of the frequency of participation in competitions during different career period on the performance progress.A practical strategy is proposed based on the above results.Methods: Through the statistical analysis on the performances and related data between1993 and 2017 of 2600 outstanding Track-and-Field athletes who rank ahead in their classes from 1993 to 2008,this research studies the relationship between gender,project,age,performance,frequency of participation and the performance progress characteristics.Specifically,the hierarchical linear model is used to investigate the changing characteristics of the performance progress;the general regression model is used to investigate the peak characteristics of the performance progress;the Cox regression model is used to study the duration characteristics of the performance progress.Results: 1)The growth phase increasing rate of women is 0.008(Standard Deviation,?)higher than that of men(P<0.001),the age of progress peak is 0.31 years higher than that of men(P<0.001),the career lifespan is 0.84 years longer than that of men(P<0.001),the retirement risk is 14% higher than that of men(P<0.001).Beyond these,there is no significant difference between men and women.2)The increasing rates in the growth phase of throwing and jumping projects are significantly higher than that of other projects(P<0.001);the decreasing rate in the decline phase of long-distance running project is significantly lower than that of other projects(P<0.001);the ages of performance progress peak for throwing and long-distance running are significantly higher than other projects(P<0.001).The peak performance window of throwing project is the longest,and sprinting project is the shortest.The career lifespan of jumping and throwing projects are significantly longer than other projects(P<0.001).There is no significant difference in retirement risk of the above projects(P=0.215).3)Every 1 year older for the first participation in competition leads to the increasing rate of growth phase increasing by0.005?(P<0.001),the career best performance decreasing by 0.019(?)(P<0.05),the peak age increasing by 0.17 years(P <0.001),the peak performance window decreasing by 0.05years(P<0.001),and the risk of retirement decreasing by 9.8%(P<0.001).Every 1 year older for the first competition in IAAF World Championships leads to the growth phase increasing rate decreasing by 0.002?(P<0.05),the best-career performance decreasing by0.070?(P<0.001),the peak age increasing by 0.27 years(P<0.01),the peak performance window decreasing by 0.03 years(P<0.05);Every 1 year later of the coming of the best performance leads to the career-best performance increasing by 0.046?(P<0.001),the peak performance window increasing by 0.03 years(P<0.01),and the retirement risk increasing by 25.5%(P<0.001).4)For every increase of 1? in the best performance during the year of the first attending the IAAF level competition leads to the growth phase increasing rate decreasing by 0.05?(P<0.001),the best career performance increasing by 0.04?(P<0.01),the peak age decreasing by 0.70 years(P<0.001),and peak performance window increasing by 0.25 years(P<0.001).For every increase of 1? in the best performance during the year of attending the IAAF World Championships,the growth phase increasing rate increases by0.05?(P<0.001),the career-best result increases by 0.68?(P<0.001),the peak age decreases by 0.65 years(P<0.001),and the peak performance window reduces by 0.27years(P<0.01).For each increase of 1? in career best performance,the peak age increases by 1.57 years(P<0.001),the peak performance window reduces by 0.23 years(P<0.01),and the risk of retirement reduces by 38.5%(P<0.001).5)For every one-time increasing in the participation during the accumulation period,the growth phase increasing rate slow down by 0.005?(P<0.01),the best-career performance decreases by 0.008(P<0.05),the peak age increases by 0.06 years(P<0.01).For every one-time increasing in the participation during the outbreak period,the annual growth rate increases by 0.005?(P<0.01),the decline phase decreasing rate increases by 0.002(P<0.01),the peak age reduces by 0.04 years(P<0.01),and the risk of retirement increases by 3.1 %(P<0.001).For every one-time increasing in the participation during the athletics-peak duration period,the decline phase decreasing rate slow down by 0.005?(P<0.001),and the risk of retirement reduces by 5%(P<0.001).Conclusion: The athletes with different gender,project,age and performance show clear variations in the characteristics of performance progress.The combination of these characteristics also presents an important impact on athlete performance at different stages of their sports careers.Therefore,training regulation(or participation)can be carried out according to the characteristics of athlete performance progress to enhance(follow)their advantages or make up(avoid)their disadvantages reflected from these characteristics,thus improve the career performance.Specifically,during the athletic-peak accumulation period,the athletes of all kinds of Track-and-Field projects should reduce the frequency of participation appropriately in order to improve the career-best performance and growth phase increasing rate,thus to improve the competition performance in the accumulation and outbreak period.During the athletic-peak outbreak period,most of sprinters should appropriately increase the frequency of participation in order to improve the career-best performance and growth phase increasing rates,which is also conducive to the improvement of competition performance during the outbreak period;Most athletes of middle and long running projects should appropriately reduce the frequency of participation during the athletic-peak outbreak period in order to slow down the speed of decrease in the decline stage and reduce the risk of retirement,which is conducive to the improvement of competition performance during the athletic-peak duration period;For jumping and throwing projects,specific training arrangements should be proposed according to the specific characteristics of individual athlete.In the athletic-peak duration period,the frequency of participation in sprinting,middle running,jumping and throwing projects should be increased appropriately,while the frequency of participation in long running events should be reduced appropriately to slow down the speed of reduction in the decline stage and reduce the risk of retirement,which is conducive to the improvement of the competition performance during the athletic-peak duration period.