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35Chinese national women's volleyball team: evolution of training theory and practice
UDC 796.015
Dr. Sc. Phil., Professor Yang Zhi2 Dr. Hab., Professor V.P. Guba1 Huang Yun3
1Russian State University of Physical Education, Sports, Youth and Tourism (SCOLIPE), Moscow 2Henan University, Kaifeng, China 3Zhengzhou SIAS University, Zhengzhou, China
Corresponding author: [email protected]
Abstract
Objective of the study was to determine the peculiarities of the technical-tactical training of the Chinese national women's volleyball team.
Results of the study and conclusions. As practice shows, in the Chinese national women's volleyball team training process special attention is paid to technical stability while high requirements are set to the quality of each match played during the competition. Team competitiveness is increased by means of targeted trainings aimed to improve the female athletes' psychological preparedness for competitions. The load intensity during such trainings approaches or even exceeds the competitive load intensity so that to meet the needs of world competitions. Such high-intensity trainings combine two dimensions: one - physiological load intensity, two - psychological load intensity. Heavy workloads require that the quality of technical and tactical practices are rationalized. The members of the Chinese national women's volleyball team give much attention to the precompetitive trainings and scoring, as well as to the rehabilitation activities after trainings and competitions. Innovative methods and tactics are an important way to achieve excellent sports results. In line with the world volleyball development trends, the Chinese national women's volleyball team is actively involved in technical-tactical research and innovative projects.
Therefore, theoretical and practical innovations in athletic training are an important reason why the Chinese national women's volleyball team has long been among the world's strongest teams and has achieved significant results in world competitions. The main advantage of the Chinese women's volleyball team training system is the unique technical and tactical style of playing, strict observance of the principle of competitive needs, training in compliance with the actual requirements, innovation based on the volleyball development trends and evolution of its main characteristics.
Keywords: volleyball, theoretical and practical support service, athletic training system, competitive performance.
Background By 2020, the Chinese women's national volleyball team has won 10 titles of the top-ranking international championships (including 3 Olympic titles) plus 11 medals of the other major events. These outstanding competitive accomplishments are believed to be due to the modern effective training system with the growing application of innovative training models and tools and new training service design and management ideas.
Volleyball in China has been on the growth since 1905 and made a great progress for this more than 100-year period. Since the 1980s, the Chinese national women's volleyball team has been increasingly
dominant in many global tournaments where it was challenged mostly by the USSR national team [2]. Nowadays the teams' technical and tactical toolkit is highly aggressive and efficient with the well harmonized attacks and defenses. The national volleyball progress history for the last century shows that the competitive successes have been mostly due to the new unexpected technical and tactical elements and special techniques spearheading progresses of the players and teamwork on the whole [1, 3].
Objective of the study was to analyze the technical and tactical progress aspects of the Chinese national women's volleyball team training system.
Results and discussion. Since a new scoring system was introduced with every error bringing a point to the rival team, the requirements to the individual technical skills and their stability were stepped up. The Chinese national women's volleyball team training system analysis shows the coaches and experts tend to give a growing priority to the technical performance stability and quality in every rally and every match. With the fast progress of the Chinese national women's volleyball team in every attack and defense element, the national sport community has been persistently looking for the technical and tactical skills excellence tools, models and methods. In pursuing this policy, the Chinese national women's volleyball team has made a special emphasis on the serving and attacking skills quality and stability in trainings, with the serves designed to facilitate the blocking and defensive actions. As a result, the Chinese national women's volleyball team serves at the 2018 World Volleyball Championships were notably more stable than those of the other leading teams and, hence, heavily complicated the opponents' attacks and facilitated the Chinese national women's volleyball team's defense technical and tactical actions.
Furthermore, the Chinese national women's volleyball team has prioritized joint training with the men's teams and individual players for the skills excelling purposes, and these trainings have effectively contributed to its competitive progress [6, 8]. The Chinese national women's volleyball team trainings are often assisted by a few top-professional sparring male players that closely mimic the game styles of the leading foreign opponents to help the female players develop the counter technical and tactical skill sets for competitions and be able to efficiently control the game and exert pressure as required for success. Prior to the Rio Olympics, the Chinese national women's volleyball team coaches Chen Zhonghe and Li Tong gave a special priority in the trainings to the team leaders' (Yuan Zhi, Shi Hayrong and others) technical and tactical excellence elements, and these trainings heavily contributed to their teams' competitive success in the event.
It should be mentioned that the competitive technical and tactical skills and the competitive performances on the whole may be highly influenced by the actual timeframes of the World Series events, their locations, venue, refereeing service quality, spectators, climatic conditions, transportation service, accommodation, diets and many other factors of influence. The coaches and athletes need to timely understand, analyze and respond these objective factors of influence on the competitive performance by special target training tools to make the athletes mentally and physically fit for potential hardships in the upcoming matches, with such precompetitive conditioning sessions being rath-
er traditional for the Chinese national women's volleyball team for the last decade. On the Chinese national women's volleyball team way to success in the topranking global events, coach Yuan Weimin has often modeled a wide variety of potential match situations in the targeted training sessions. The team, for example, has been trained for 2 hours straight after transportation, with the training timeframes and workloads simulating the actual expected matches.
Note that many World Series events are always run around the midday time which is the traditional lunchtime for the Chinese athletes. No wonder that the athletes many be far from their individual best physical and mental fitness standards at that time. Knowing that, the team management runs a series of special scheduled trainings to help the athletes meet the physical and mental problems, get fit for any match time and effectively adjust to whatever situation when necessary [4, 10]. Such special unpredictable trainings make the athletes highly fit for a wide range of unexpected problems and stressors that may come up in matches. They develop an effective adaptability to get always fit for response to any problem, plus highly immunity to any influence from outside. When Lan Ping coached the Chinese national women's volleyball team, she used special precompetitive conditioning trainings to effectively model the upcoming match times and conditions on the stadiums and indoors. These trainings effectively helped the athletes develop specific stress tolerances for the upcoming matches, with a firm concentration on own technical and tactical skills and missions - to be able to effectively mobilize their competitive resources for success.
With the permanent improvements in the theoretical and practical support service quality, the team has given a growing priority to the rehabilitation methods, models and tools - knowing that the competitive and training workloads need to be well harmonized with the rehabilitation service for competitive progress [5, 9]. As things now stand, the Chinese national women's volleyball team trainings take more than 6 hours per day 6 days a week - that makes up 36 hours a week in total. The team trains particularly hard for the "Three Major Tournaments" (Olympic Games, World Championships and the World Cup) with a special priority to the individual physical fitness management aspects and competitive stress tolerance. The team often runs high-intensity trainings closely simulating the actual competitions to make the athletes fit for the topranking events. These high-intensity trainings make a special emphasis on the following two aspects: (1) physical fitness for success; and (2) mental conditioning for the competitive stressors. The trainings are also designed to excel the technical and tactical skills by special practices, with a special focus to the counteractions to the opponents' technical and tactical ac-
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tions and match situations, for the athletes to be highly fit for the potential mental and physical stressors and able to respond by the most efficient technical and tactical skills. Such aggressive confrontation mimicking training methods with the performance scoring, wins and losses has proved highly efficient for the individual mental conditioning and teamwork improvement purposes making the athletes highly fit for the mental and physical pressures in matches on their way to success.
Furthermore, the Chinese national women's volleyball team has lately given a special priority to the precompetitive target trainings with the performance scoring followed by highly effective rehabilitation sessions after every match and tournament. When athletes are seriously injured and unfit for further high-intensity training, they enjoy special therapeutic and rehabilitation services to facilitate their recovery as required by the team health policies and practices. With the modern volleyball sport being increasingly commercialized and professionalized, the national athletes on the whole and national team members in particular feel more and more responsible for the club/ team performance and, hence, train hard to keep up their competitive fitness throughout the whole calendar year, with the innovative technical and tactical training methods and models being particularly appreciated for their growing contributions to the competitive successes [7]. This is the reason why the Chinese national women's volleyball team management, coaches and athletes are always prepared to test the new technical and tactical research findings and innovative technical and tactical training tools.
Conclusion. Modern theoretical and practical support service is ranked increasingly high among the priority training components that pave the way for the Chinese national women's volleyball team to the competitive successes in the top-ranking world competitions. The key advantages of the Chinese national women's volleyball team training system include the unique technical and tactical skill sets and special game styles developed by the team; persistent progress with a special focus on the individual skills,
teamwork and competitive spirit; high customization of the training system for success in modern volleyball; and efficient innovative training models and tools geared to respond to the volleyball progress trends and the actual evolution of the game with time in every element.
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