You cant go balls out every week in practice and then in comp every athlete in the world has periods of peaking and de-loading within a training block. Its just a relativley new thing for us fans to get our heads around.

Usain Bolt doesnt go the track every day and then sprint as fast as he can for an hour. He sets to peak for the major events, which is why he may get beat in the circuit races, but not on the big stage.

Fans just need to get there heads around periods of under performing as the players cycle through peaks and ramping phases. Which as a fan is easier said than done.

We did stop tryin thats why Sam is off to the NRL because Wigan didnt need to try against Salford and Widnes etc etc, Micky Mac was kept ticking over while Logan was given a chance in the team. Get the poor form out of your head we rested key players so they could perform in the business end of the season. I really do wonder if that brain cell in your head is lonely

I agree as the evidence is clear. However, Bolt doesn't plan to finish second, it is just a result of his condition. There are some on here who would appear to believe that Bolt deliberately loses lesser races to win the big ones, that is my point.

The least they could do though is admit they don t know what they are talking about though dont you think? But i imagine the best bet would be that they will spin it via a reply of war and peace proportions so we get bored by the third chapter.

Excellent post.. But you may as well go bang your head against a wall if you expect all to get a grasp of it...

Dave read this book it explains how peaking is achieved
" Bowerman and the Men of Oregon: The Story of Oregon's Legendary Coach and Nike's Cofounder"

this is the man who created the Oregon team training methods - the team who train Mo Farah. Its a good read I recommend it for everyone, one of those you can pick up and read bits at lunchtime or dare I say it - a good toilet read lol

Exactly.

The plan is never to lose games, but the plan is to go into some games of the year not physically at the height if your powers but yet to still win.

Sometimes that is achievable sometimes it is not. For us it was not but the plan still came together perfectly in the long run.

We went 5 points clear in the league and simply had to pull back on that front to sustain the charge for a double. Half cooked sides, jammed with youth and injuries meant we had to pull back.

When you look at the season as a whole it does point towards one thing and that's Wigan being the best team in 2013.

I don't believe for one second that we "wanted to lose".

However, we simply didn't mind if we lost, as the job (achieve a top-4 play-off place) was done.

That's why so many kids were in the team toward the end of the season.

Also, it will do them good, as they now have more experience of what to expect, whenever they need to step up again.

All comes down to focus and what you want from the match.

Perfect example is our loss to Huddersfield. Huddersfield were playing in their cup final that day we had ours 2 weeks later. You could see the marked difference.

When it comes to a month later and both are going for the same goal there's only one clear cut winner.

Hit the nail on the head.

I am sure it was quite deliberate we played who we did v Hull at the DW but that team wanted to win the game. The week after, the Superman game, we had to have a full team out given the sponsorship but neither team wanted to lose that either.

For the "take the foot off the gas" theory to have any validity that game should have been a damp squib and Leeds, past masters at "peaking" apparently, should not have played as they did.

I readily accept Wane will rest players in certain games more than he might if the league leaders was the way to win the title but I don't accept when we have a full team out, they are sent out not to try and win the game.

Interesting stuff, especially the long post from jonh regarding conditioning, about which I previously knew next to nothing.

I am quite sure that the players on the pitch are totally focussed on winning the game. However the team selection is another matter. As DaveO says above, sometimes players are rested and presumably that means that the club takes the view that winning that game is not as important as preserving the condition of the rested players for other games.

Back when winning the League was the big prize players would take the field carrying all sorts of knocks, playing through pain-killing injections and with copious amounts of strapping and physiotherapy. The 'Mission Impossible' season for example - I'd bet my house almost every player was turning out with knocks galore in that final run-in.

Now fast-forward to 2013 and once it was clear we would definitely finished top 4, Wane could allow key players (almost) all the time they needed - I say almost because Wembley was obviously a 'must-win'. The final few regular season games could be lost without much consequence. They didn't really matter. The Hull game being the most glaring example.

That's not to say teams EVER go out to lose. Any who's ever played would laugh at the idea. But the fact is Wane, quite rightly, has been able to allow sufficient recovery or rest time for the likes of Lockers, Sam, and Green and others without endangering our play-off prospects, which meant he could then select his strongest sides when it counted.

I appreciate jonh's post may well be entirely correct and Bitcon is just about the best in the business. But alongside that by around June/July we had room to allow key players to rest and recover when required and to blood youngsters, which also helped the squad peak when it counted.