Book Review: Periodization by Bondarchuk
Before Dr. Anatoliy Bondarchuk moved to North America six years ago, not much was written about his research in English. But since then, many of his ideas have finally been translated. His first two major works in English discussed the concept “transfer of training” (you can find reviews of those books here and here). In this respect, they focused on the finest details of training: the exercises performed each day. Some exercises transfer over to the competition exercise better than others, and he laid out data showing how different exercises correlate to different track and field events. Bondarchuk’s new book takes a step back and looks at the bigger concept of periodization across all sports.
Periodization, in short, is how you organize training throughout the season to help reach the athlete’s goals. In contrast to the first books, this volume does not mention one exercise and does not discuss how to build a training day or a training week. Instead it presents the methods in which training programs can be combined throughout the season for every sport.
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Is this a Yessis translation again? Someone really needs to take over that job. This book is already published in Russian (http://www.mdk-arbat.ru/bookcard?book_id=537994, in 2008) and sometimes original Russian, however humble my knowledge of it is, is easier to understand than literal translations from Yessis. He’s sometimes translating a word for word instead of trying to come up with terms, expressions and order that is not confusing for English readers (those poor translations are evident in Transfer O.T, at least it is for those that speak Slavic languages). It’s a hard job for sure, but it’s worth it.
Dr B has another book in Russian, http://www.mdk-arbat.ru/bookcard?book_id=2386366 (Managing the training process of high level athletes, also in 2008). Sedykh is on the cover 🙂 Keep it away from Yessis, as much as I love the guy for bringing the soviet ideas closer to people, Dr B’s work deserves better.
I will buy the book, although I’m sure I will cringe at translations. Thanks for the review Martin.
Yessis is not doing the translation, but it is not any better. There are actually two translators for this book. One translator does the first and last chapter, and another does all the middle chapters. The middle chapters are done fairly well. There are a few typos, but the content is easy to understand especially since it is combined with the diagrams. The first chapter is another story. Personally, I think Google translate would have done a better job. Like Yessis, he tends to do more literal translations and the grammar is also very bad.
The book he showed me yesterday in Russian is not the one you linked to. This book was a little older and very long (perhaps 600 or 800 pages of smaller print text). I think the 2008 book is also based on this other book…perhaps it is a slimmed down version. For this book he not only translated a section of the larger book, but also took out some of the obscure details that are not as relevant in most situations. For example, he discusses how the reaction changes after periods of passive rest, different forms of active rest, etc. But the types of active rest available are numerous and he only chooses the most common ones (those that make up nearly all practical applications of active rest by coaches).
Yes, I found that longer book now in a list of his published work that I stumbled on online. It was published in Ukraine in 2000, it’s 567 pages.
A lot of his articles and short works along with what I mentioned before can be found in Moscow in Central library for physical culture. I wonder if they allow copying of articles. He has a short book on hammer throw from 1985 that I would like to see, although it’s not my event. It’s little over 100 pages.
Anyway, I’m glad there will be more books from him in English in the future.
Don’t worry, I’m well aware of the hammer throw book and working on getting it out in English. It may take a year or two, but that’s high on my to do list.
I want to read this stuff so badly. Being poor sucks. I can’t justify spending $60-$70 on a book when I’m reading journal abstracts for free and can download a wealth of stuff onto my kindle for $10. I hope to pick some of Dr. B’s book in the future though.