Abstract

The Lithuanian modern pentathlon athletes won silver and bronze medals in Beijing Olympic Games, The training technologies of these athletes and the change in their physical functional capacities have been investigated for a long period already. This has allowed for an objective assessment of adaptive changes in the athletes’ organism and for a comparison of their physical and functional capacities during the two fouryear Olympic cycles. The goal of the research was to analyse the structure and content of the four year Olympic cycle ‘Beijing-2008’, to investigate and evaluate the change in the physical and functional capacities of Lithuanian national pentathlon team members during the analysed period and to compare the indices with the analogous research results obtained before the Olympic Games in Athens. The sample of the research included two members of Lithuanian Olympic pentathlon team members who trained for the Olympic Games following the programme `Beijing-2008’ A number of capacity indices were measured and the training load of pentathletes and their training time input were analysed. The research revealed a stabilisation in the body mass of the both athletes over the four-year Olympic cycle and an upward tendency in the pentathletes muscle mass. During the Olympic cycle, the muscular power during short-time work remained stable. The athletes achieved and maintained a very high aerobic capacity throughout the entire four-year Olympic cycle. lt was extremely high in the last year of the cycle and allowed the athletes to demonstrate good results in the running event, which was crucial in the fight for the medals, The research results show that the pentathletes’ physical fitness and functional capacity are still in progress, which forecast sufficient physical and functional capacity of these Lithuanian pentathlon athletes to strive for high performance in the London Olympic Games. Verf.-Referat