Welcome to the second edition of my (sometimes overly extensive) answers to reader questions. I’m always excited to be asked the tough inquiries, because they are ones that I have asked myself for many years. On the docket today is one tough mother of a question… hell, I don’t even know if it’s a question, but rather a hard poke in the side to expand on a topic I haven’t written much about lately: periodization and planning.
In my mind, the periodization and planning of training is kind of like music: the possibilities are infinite. This being so, it is impossible to truly write a concise expository on a perfect system, but rather things that we have found to work well, that also have a high trackability and repeatability value. There are definitely systems and philosophies of periodization that work better than others. Also, just like any great musician or composer who is constantly re-inventing their greatest works, so does a great coach know how and when to refine the system their athletes have been working on.
What is your approach on periodization, and how do you manage volume and intensity over time?
Answer: Ah, periodization. I am undergoing the process of paging through the 400+ page work on the exact subject in a book by Tudor Bompa, and Greg Haff. Thousands and thousands of pages have been written on the subject, and thousands more possible combinations of schemes and methods can be derived, based on what a coach thought worked for a given athlete. Much of how coaches actually end up dealing with periodization in reality is based on a rough template (and many times, no template), with lots of intuitive alterations on the fly.
Before I get any farther on the subject of managing volume, intensity and arrangement, know this: Training arrangement is based on the athlete, not a template or “plan”. What is periodization really? The textbook answer would say that it is a systematic manner of training that allows an athlete to achieve their highest performance at the most important competitions.
We would also agree that a good periodization system is important to allow for year to year progress and performance enhancement, as well as a means to achieve an optimal level of performance each training year, in view of the long term goal (applying intensive means early in the training process can hinder the long term ceiling of an athlete). The name periodization, in itself, insinuates a need for different themes of training over the course of the year, and is fundamentally different than “planning”, but we’ll cover both for this article.
The traditional manner by which many coaches “periodize” training is overdone; starting with a ton of metabolic circuit training, then moving to hypertrophy, then strength, power and so on. The inherent problem with this thought of multiple, unique, training stages, is that some athletes will inherently have a better training response to hypertrophy and higher reps, while others respond better to lower reps. I won’t even mention the “aerobic base”, since I’m likely preaching to the choir on this one. Virtually any training carries with it an aerobic component (just look at the breathing pattern of an athlete after they finish a 200m dash), and speed-power athletes can get all of the aerobic conditioning they need from things like bodyweight circuit training, light trail running, and intensive/extensive tempo sprints. Since these types of metabolic training, in the proper doses, help athletes to recover from their speed/power training, doesn’t it make better sense to use it in all training phases?
When periodization in the traditional manner finds success over a more specific year round program, it is largely because the specific program never gave athletes enough time to rest and recover from the physical and mental stressors that tend to buildup and reach a bottleneck every 2-4 months. “Dulling the knife” is only truly useful when a coach doesn’t know how to rest their athletes properly, and doing worthless training of dubious specificity for two months will reduce the chances that the athlete will blow up in the early part of their season in this scenario. Hard, year round specific training is demanding on multiple levels of the ____ (insert fancy word for human/athlete like “organism” here).
The art of intuitive alterations and ownership
The key to a programs ultimate success, is more so the alterations within the program (provided that they are good) than the yearly training scheme. A coach with a great periodization template, but no ability to alter programming based on individual athletic response, is going to find only a handful of their athletes reach maximal potential. All those fancy, drawn up, year-round periodiziation plans you see in the textbooks are more or less USELESS when it comes down to actually training athletes. They look “smart”, but they are far from practical.
I’ve seen coaches go to the length to write out their whole training year, down to the daily sets and reps, prior to the season. How can this possibly work, when athletes will have a variety of responses to different cycle, set, rep and exercise schemes? The best results come when a training program can be effectively altered based on the intuitive feelings of the coaches, and in many cases, the athletes. The best coaches have the experience to not only be able to make week to week adjustments in the programming, but also are able to allow athletes to make their own intuitive impact on the program. This method can increase ownership and autonomy of the athlete as far as their training is concerned.
Some of the best results I’ve seen in training have been when I simply gave advice to athletes who already had a good idea of what training model they wanted to follow, or I gave them a very loose structure, where they could easily self-regulate the intensity of any given training day. This is the principle behind a great training program that I’m releasing in a few short months, that gives athletes a basic model by which to incorporate their own intuitive training self-knowledge, which has led to some massive lifetime PR’s, even in very experienced trainees. Just as Bruce Lee’s famous “Jeet Kun Do” was a unfixed fighting philosophy with guiding thoughts, many times the best training is un-fixed, but has a guiding backbone to tie it all together. That is the philosophy of my upcoming program, and although I won’t go into more detail on it here, I can’t wait to release it to the public.
Training methods and models
Many popular periodization models that you see are really just based on finding a way to allow adequate training gains to happen in the majority bell-curve of athletes (usually in barbell strength, and not so much other, more specific athletic qualities). A great example of this is a “3-1” block system, where the athletes will train hard for 3 weeks, and then deload for a week. Chances are that the majority of athletes on this system will be slightly over-reached by the end of the third week, provided that the loading was consistent and systematic, and the majority of athletes will have recovered pretty well by the end of the deload week. It’s not a bad system, but it’s not always optimal.
A typical yearly training plan will arrange these types of blocks in “ascending” cycles in early, general prep cycles (to increase work capacity), and then “descending” cycles in special prep cycles (to increase strength, speed and power). When the competitive season draws near, the cycles may move down to a “2-1” block style, to ensure adequate rest, and also allow better planning of work around key competitions. I have listed below, a quick sample of what this can look like over a semester long training program.
(Click to enlarge)
I’m not trashing this system, it works well for many athletes, but the question is always: How do we optimize this type of thing for each individual athlete? The above type of programming just happens to represent programming the way it is typically implemented for many sports. I’ll give a few tips as to help cater the above type of program (which is one of many, I haven’t even mentioned either Bondarchuk or Rollover style programming here, which can be just as, if not more effective, particularly when training athletes for a singular skill).
Athlete centered periodization tips (for “standard” periodization models)
- Fast-twitch athletes, and neurally “wired” athletes tend to do better on shorter training cycles; think 2 weeks on to 1 week deload, rather than 3-4 weeks on, and a week of deloading.
- Slower-twitch athletes, and grinders can do well on longer training cycles, but exercises and intensities should still be occasionally varied in these training setups. The more intense skill, and the less variability in that particular skill, the more often training should be varied.
- The more intense the primary exercise is, the higher its impact and shock value, and the less inherent variability it has, the less often it can be used in the program. High jumping is more demanding on the joints than dunking in basketball after playing a few pick up games, due to the low variability, and high relative effort in high jumping. How many multi-sport high jumpers come right off of basketball season to compete well in the first few meets, and then fall through the floor in the subsequent months? A case of over-specialization in a low-variability, high shock exercise. Compare the high jump to the hammer throw in track and field, which can be performed every single day to much success. In the hammer throw, the variability in each throw is substantially higher than a high jump takeoff, and joint impact is lower, so it can be performed more often. Take a look at powerlifting: Suited Westside Barbell athletes inflict massive joint pressures and micro-trauma each time they hit a max-effort day, and this is why they must rotate exercise variations every 2 weeks, or their CNS will throw a brick under their gas pedel to preserve the structural integrity of the body.
- Understand the repercussions of how far an athlete “drops off” performance in any given session. For example, in a power-squat session, if an athlete hits a best early score of 1100 watts on the squat, and falls to a best of 1000 by the end of the session; they have dropped off by about 10% in power. Another athlete may have only fallen off by 5% in power in the same workout. How do you think the recovery rates of these athletes will differ over the next few days? The best option when training large groups is to simply keep the drop-off the same for all athletes.
- Understand the repercussions of setting a competitive or practice PR. Every great training day will almost always be subsequently presented with mediocre training days, as the body is trying to pull itself back to homeostasis following the high performance effort. Coaches need to anticipate the back-off that must happen here, and this is an important intuitive aspect of good coaching.
- Some athletes may be more “spent” at the end of a particular training cycle than others. Many times, the success of a particular training cycle is going to depend on how much de-loading the athlete got before beginning that training cycle. All athletes have “adaptation reserves”, which they “spend” during the course of training. If those adaptation reserves aren’t back, at least close to full, before commencing a new, intense, training cycle, results will be very limited. Athletes will be in a varied amount of endocrine/adrenal fatigue following each cycle, so be sure to take this into account before planning the next one.
- Don’t run two training cycles of the exact same nature back-to-back, i.e. two 3-1 cycles with the same volume and intensity, distribution, exercises, etc. Athletes will get bored of this over time.
- Vary the emphasis of each training day, so that each week flows a bit differently than the one before, this being more true in training with high shock and low variability, such as powerlifting or high jumping. A nice template I have worked with this year (in a 3 day training model, MWF)goes like this: Week 1: Density, Strength, Density. Week 2: Strength, Power, Strength. Week 3: Power, Strength, Power. Week 4: Deload, Power, Deload. You can then restart the cycle with some new exercises and variations. It certainly doesn’t have to go exactly like that, but it’s an idea that has worked well for me.
- Keep in mind the level of adrenal fatigue that several months, or seasons, of good solid training, yielding either season or lifetime personal bests can cause. I’ve seen a number of track athletes who were physically in their best shape at the end of the fall training, who just tried to hang on during the spring season. These athletes never took a break, and their endocrine system and CNS wasn’t rested enough to allow more improvement later in the year. (On a side-note, I was “blessed” by injury by junior year of college. I had an absolute breakthrough fall of training, setting a 4” practice personal best in high jump, as well as improving in many other measures.) I pulled my hamstring the first practice of spring semester, and wasn’t 100% for about a month. This injury saved me though, as it let my endocrine system recover, and when I did start competing hard, I quickly escalated up to big personal bests, all the way to outdoor season. If I had just trained hard all the way through, I would have likely struggled. I’ve seen this happen to a good handful of track athletes). Long term adrenal/endocrine fatigue is a reality as well. Charlie Francis said that athletes need to take a low volume training year after 7 years of hard training, or they will likely fail to continue to improve performance.
- Keep a list of simple and specific measurements that have a high transfer to the outcome of your sport, and track those regularly to get an idea if what you are doing is working or not. Realize that improvement in these measures won’t be linear week to week, but they should be recorded to the point where a coach can plan for an anticipated improvement each phase, as well as peak performance in the most important competitions of the year with a reasonable amount of expected success.
- For athletes who don’t have competitions to “peak” for, the importance of mandatory down-periods every 3-4 months, as well as the regular rotation of exercises should be implemented. See the above point
My periodization and planning models
With that said, I derive much of my own periodization based off of Cal Dietz’s Triphasic Training, coupled with the exercise hierarchy as emphasized by Bondarchuk, and made popular by Martin Bingisser. I also heavily lean on the philosophy of Dan John and Pavel’s, “Easy Strength”, with not “forcing” adaptation and overloading the adrenal glands and endocrine system. This was a great book for helping me build the intuitive sense of how athletes recover from workouts, as well as how to prioritize and ration out various training modalities. Finally, some of the rotational principles of the “Cube Method” and the rollover method in track and field have influenced the way I introduce, eliminate, and re-introduce stimulus into the training program to allow the subtle micro-stressors on the joints and muscle-tendon complexes of a particular pattern reside, which allows the CNS to wire more power to the specific sport movements. I would highly recommend Triphasic Training, Easy Strength, and The Cube Method for those interested in both advanced and intuitive forms of planning and periodization. I know this doesn’t offer much for those who were hoping to see my best periodization schemes (I’m writing a book on this as well, due out this summer), but that is far too much to cover in one article.
I’ll leave on the topic of Auto-regulation, which is a model of periodization all in itself. I shied away from “auto-reg” setups in my early coaching years, particularly when inno-sport was at its’ peak, because a jump to those models were just too big of a jump for me to make intellectually and especially intuitively. Now that I’ve had more coaching experience, I know that there are a number of athletes who do well on low frequency training models (often times, the very powerful and explosive ones), and also, giving athletes that I remotely train auto-regulation training models coupled with a solid framework of exercise and cycle progression can work extremely well. In my experience, it is largely the very explosive athletes who have the highest capacity to damage themselves each workout, who do very well with low-frequency, rotational exercise methods.
When it comes to tentativeness to adapt an auto-regulatory training model, realize that auto-regulatory training isn’t black and white. You can make any portion of a traditional training block auto-regulatory by simply performing a skill until you reach a desired drop-off in performance, which can help you to decide how long the rest period will need to be until the next training session. When rest periods are fixed in a workout, such as training on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, then it is the workout days that become altered based on drop-off to meet the final needs of the program direction. Above all, remember that nothing is black and white, everything is grey, so adjust your program to meet the needs of your athletes. I’ll leave with this quote that explains the concept of planning well.
“You have to learn the rules of the game, and then you have to play better than everyone else”
Albert Einstein
Know how athletic response works, how to arrange a general template based on your goals and time frame, and then play the game better than everyone else through intuitive adjustments.
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