periodization training techniques

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If you did, your body would simply adapt to the training you were doing, your fitness would settle in at a fixed level, and you could train far into the next century without making one tittle of improvement. Hoping to perform better with an unchanging training programme is like expecting to become a maths wizard while working on only the simple equations encountered in first-year algebra.

Your body's tendency to merely maintain the status quo means that if you want to get better your workouts must progress to a higher level of difficulty. To progress, you could simply increase your intensity, volume, and/or frequency of training over time. As long as you weren't exceeding your body's ability to adapt, you would steadily get better. The trick would be to avoid exceeding your body's biomechanical and physiological limits; too much stress would actually begin to break your body down, rather than build it up.

This guileless pattern of gradually increasing the quantity of work you do, the speed of your workouts, and/or the frequency with which you train is the simplest way to alter your training over time in hopes of improving your performances. Such progression does produce performance gains, but by itself it can never help you reach your ultimate potential, because it ignores the fact that your training must also be goal-oriented. There are a number of specific things you need to accomplish in order to optimize performance, and these goals aren't always reached merely by fiddling with the 'work-load knob' on your training programme.

The seven commandments
If you're an endurance athlete, for example, there are seven key things you must do to perform at your very best. You must:
1. Expand your VO2max (maximal aerobic capacity) to the greatest possible extent, so that your body becomes a huge energy-creating machine. As your capacity to process oxygen swells, your ability to exercise without fatigue increases dramatically, and the difficulty of various movement speeds decreases. To put it simply, you can cycle, swim, run, row, skate, or ski further and faster.

2. Increase the strength of your muscles and connective tissues, because doing so fortifies your body against injuries and thus allows you to train and progress without unplanned interruption. Becoming stronger is also the first step on the path to improved economy (see goal no. 5).

3. Lift your lactate threshold (LT) to the highest-possible level. LT lift-offs increase all of your race paces and make it possible to move at faster-than-ever speeds without fatigue.

4. Maximally pad your power. Optimizing your power means not only developing greater force with your muscles - but also learning to exert that force more quickly than usual. Power means faster, more explosive movement - a quicker trip from start to finish of your races; it matters not at all whether your competitions last four minutes or three hours. Of course, one way to augment your average power output is to simply boost VO2max and lactate threshold, but developing maximal power also requires the utilization of special training techniques which increase your muscles' amount and rate of force production.

5. Become as economical as possible. Being economical means having Honda efficiency, even though you have a huge, 'Rolls-Royce' exercise motor (VO2max). Remember that possessing a great VO2max is synonymous with having an expanded heart, as well as muscles which have the capability of processing incredible amounts of oxygen, while being economical means moving along at decent speeds while your heart is still puttering along moderately and your muscles aren't forced to gear up all their oxygen-processing capacity (eg, even though the movement speed is high-quality, you're 'operating' at only a modest fraction of your VO2max, giving you lots of 'room' to pick up your pace without exceeding your oxygen-handling potential). And of course being economical means beating the pants off your fellow competitor, even though that rascal has a similar VO2max, because you can cycle, swim, or run at the same race pace as him at a lower fraction of your capacity, making the speed feel easier to you.

6. Restore yourself regularly and systematically, healing the muscular, connective-tissue, nervous-system, and endocrine traumas which are the natural result of hard training, and thus permitting further hard work and a relentless approach toward your ultimate goal. This restoration would include one prolonged period each year during which your body totally refurbishes itself, making far more than the minor repairs required between workouts.

7. Develop specific endurance. It's not enough to be a physiological thoroughbred, with good VO2max, LT, economy, strength, and power in a rested body. You must also develop the ability to function smoothly and efficiently and with minimal fatigue at your goal speed - the one that will take you to a PB in your key competition of the season. Research has shown us, for example, that a runner who is economical at six-minute per mile pace MAY NOT be economical at seven-minute pace. If that individual wanted to run a marathon at seven-minute tempo, he would have to devote part of his training time to functioning at that specific intensity in order to become economical at that pace.

Train step-by-step
That's a lot to do! And of course, you can't accomplish all those goals at once - with the same kind of training. It would be ridiculous to expect to maximally increase your VO2max - a physiological change which depends on rather large amounts of intense training - at the same time as you were attempting to enhance your rest and recovery.

It would also be foolish to expect to optimize your lactate threshold at the same time as you were making large gains in power, since the former depends on continuous movement for 20 to 30 minutes at a time at moderately difficult paces and also the performance of long intervals (lasting for six to 12 minutes or so) at about 88 to 90 per cent of maximal, while the latter necessitates shorter blasts at considerably higher speeds and special power-building drills.

And it's silly to throw yourself into power training without first building a broad platform of strength; the upgraded strength will protect you from injury during the high-intensity power-promoting workouts, and maximal gains in power simply can't be achieved unless muscles first develop the ability to generate greater force. The lesson is that you must do things in step-by-step fashion when you train, rather than attempt to improve everything at once.

It's important to remember, too, that the gradual development of proficiency in a sport changes the way the body adapts to training and necessitates an actual change in the make-up of one's training programme - to ensure that further performance progress can be attained. For example, research has shown that beginning shot putters make major advances in performance primarily by improving the strength of their arm muscles, while experienced putters increase the length of their throws mainly by boosting the strength and power of their legs (Programming and Organization of Training, Y. V. Verkhoshansky, Fizkultura i Sport Publ., Moscow, 1985). Investigations also reveal that pole vaulters initially make large increases in performance by improving the strength of their abdominal muscles but can only continue to progress by achieving major upswings in shoulder and arm strength (Supertraining, 3rd ed., Mel Siff and Yuri V. Verkhoshansky, Vision Press, 1997). Similarly, beginning runners or runners coming back to the sport after a lay-off can make rather large gains in performance simply by boosting their mileage, while highly experienced runners must tweak their intensity of training and perform special strength- and power-building drills in order to continue to make progress.

The Greeks started it
For all of these reasons, the periodization of your training is critically important. Complicated definitions for periodization training exist, but the term simply means the division of your overall training programme into periods which accomplish different goals. Since you can't do everything at once, you must divide your training time up into discrete blocks and tackle one or two goals at a time.

Over 2000 years ago, the ancient Greeks were the first to use periodization training, although their periodization plans were very simple (they simply increased their total training load over time, using heavier and heavier weights and resistances, for example, to train strength athletes who were preparing for the Olympic Games). After the Greeks, periodization training theory entered a 1900-year lull, only to be revived earlier this century in Russia during the Russian Revolution. Since that time, the Russians have literally led the world in the development of periodization theory. The Russians have also enjoyed one key advantage over other countries; they have actually tested various periodization schemes with large numbers of their international athletes and have accumulated an extensive amount of practical information about periodizing training properly.

The earliest periodization training schemes utilized by the Russians in the 1920s and 1930s were logical but pretty basic; their exercise scientists theorized that training should be divided into what they called general, preparatory, and specific phases. The general stage of training, often lasting for about two months or so, was supposed to develop the heart and lungs, the preparatory training, also two months in duration, sought to boost muscle strength and endurance, and the specific period of about eight months prepared an athlete for an individual sporting event by emphasizing extensive practice of the precise movements involved in the sport.

A tough nut to crack
Finnish and English scientists soon entered the fray and begin publishing periodization papers and books, but - unfortunately - the majority of investigators have provided us with lots of periodization theories but few hard facts. Of course, one reason for that is that meaningful research into periodization needs to cover rather broad time periods.

When we examine the differences in training between athletes who are successful and those who are mediocre, we want to know not how they trained for the past week or even month but how they've organized their training over the previous year. Proper periodization means coordinating training correctly over extended periods of time - long enough to make large gains in fitness and prepare properly for major competitions.

That makes periodization a rather tough nut to crack for exercise scientists, who often feel that they need to limit an investigation to 12 weeks or so - as part of the 'publish-or-perish' lifestyle of academia. There are also major difficulties involved in getting a group of athletes to adhere to a specific training programme for a year or more at a time; many athletes will drop out, others will not follow the prescribed training very closely, and some will get hurt. For an exercise researcher, embarking on a long-term periodization project is a pretty risky thing to do, because the whole thing may blow up in his/her face after a year or more of hard work.

Words, words, words
So the periodization theorists - rather than experimentalists - have held sway, and they have achieved major success in one area: they have given us a large amount of jargon. For example, it's impossible for any periodization 'expert' worth his salt to write an article about periodizing training without mentioning the terms macrocycles, mesocycles, and microcycles.

Since you'll encounter these terms often if you read about periodization in the future, we might as well give you an account of what they mean.

According to convention, a 'microcycle' is simply a number of training sessions which form a recurrent unit. For example, if your training consists of a hard day, an easy day, and then a rest day, followed by the hard-easy-rest pattern again, these three days represent your basic training unit, or microcycle. Or, if you're a runner and your typical training week consists of a hill workout, an interval session on the track, a long run, three easy runs, and a rest day, that repetitive weekly pattern is your microcycle.

In contrast, a 'mesocycle' is a block of training, consisting of some number of microcycles, which emphasizes the attainment of a particular goal. A 'macrocycle' is a long stretch of training which is intended to accomplish an extremely important overall goal, such as the preparation for and completion of a very important marathon. A macrocycle is made up of a number of different microcycles and covers a period of many months.

Typically, a microcycle lasts for five to 10 days (for many athletes, a microcycle is simply one week of training in a predictable way), a mesocycle usually covers four to 12 weeks, and a macrocycle lasts for 10 to 12 months. Many athletes who periodize their training don't alter their macrocycles very much; one year is structured very much like the next, and thus the year is the largest unit of periodization. However, some athletes think longer term and may utilize what are called 'large macrocycles' which consist of two to four 'small macrocycles,' each of which lasts about a year. These small macrocycles may differ from each other considerably. For example, a high jumper preparing for the Olympics in the year 2000 might spend most of the year of 1998 (the first small macrocycle) working on agility, flexibility, strength, and power, devoting little time to actual jumping or competition, and then shift over in 1999 (the second small macrocycle) to a much greater emphasis on technique and an increase in the number of competitive efforts. In this case, the 32-month period from the beginning of 1998 to the summer Olympic Games in 2000 could be considered the large macrocycle.

Different athletes, different needs
Of course, these terms don't tell us much about HOW a periodization plan should be created, which is the really challenging part of periodization. The first step in proper periodization is to realize that there is not one best periodization plan; what works for one athlete may actually hurt the performances of another. A key reason for this, of course, is that different athletes can have dramatically different needs. For example, a runner with relatively poor muscular strength might need to spend several blocks of training (mesocycles) within a year focussing on developing general and running-specific strength by carrying out a variety of progressively more difficult resistance routines. Such a runner would also need to devote a large chunk of time to hill training, which increases the force-development capacities of the leg muscles. In contrast, a very strong runner could spend considerably less time on such activities and might more profitably mark off large periods of time to work on strengthening a particular weakness, such as a poor lactate threshold or a miserly VO2max.

So, it's clear that each individual athlete needs his/her own unique periodization plan. Periodizing an individual's programme requires skill in figuring out what the athlete really needs - and of course knowledge of the various periodization possibilities (the different programmes which might work effectively). The person doing the periodizing must be a 'training doctor' who can figure out what's wrong with the patient and also knows (and can evaluate) the various therapies which are available.

Catching the 'wave'
That's not always easy, because there are many therapy (periodization) models - and lots of hot debate about which is 'best'. The notion that there is a profusion of periodization possibilities may come as a bit of a surprise to you if you have read about periodization before. In fact, many athletes believe that there is just one way to periodize - the so-called basic wave-like periodization pattern. Using this scheme, athletes first build up their volume (total quantity of training) to a rather lofty level (creating a big 'wave' of miles), while intensity (speed) of training remains fairly modest. This initial period of training is supposed to establish basic strength and endurance. The mileage wave then gradually weakens, replaced by a steadily increasing wave of intensity (mileage is reduced, but average movement speed rises as the quality of workouts increases). According to convention and tradition, the athlete is ready for major competitions once the intensity wave has peaked. After the competitive season is over, the individual rests for awhile before catching another mileage wave and beginning a new season of training.

This basic wavelike pattern of periodization is utilized, year after year, by millions of athletes all over the world. It has a certain logic to it (it seems good to gradually build muscular and connective-tissue strength before subjecting the body to the harsh rigours of high-intensity training). That's not to say that it's the ideal way to prevent injuries, however! Among runners, for example, most injuries are over-use maladies which are more likely to occur during high-mileage weeks, rather than lower-mileage periods, even though the latter may contain a bounty of quality workouts.

The basic wavelike pattern also parallels the classic 'dyad' of 'aerobic' and 'anaerobic' training which countless numbers of coaches still use to plan the training programmes of their charges. The idea is to gradually build up 'aerobic endurance' by covering lots of moderately paced miles (the mileage wave) and then to 'sharpen' athletes with intense 'anaerobic conditioning', which is supposed to improve speed and heighten surging and kicking ability in races. Viewed from a muscle-fibre rather than aerobic-anaerobic paradigm, the notion is to first work on the slow-twitch muscle fibres and then to shift attention to the fast twitchers in time for competition.

Of course, this view of training is ridiculously simple. Some accomplished athletes have been found to have almost no fast-twitch muscle fibres, for example, so how can they work on something they don't have? In addition, it's very misleading to categorize an endurance athlete's training as 'anaerobic', since even the high-speed movements carried out by very skilled endurance athletes actually involve a mix of aerobic and anaerobic energy creation, with the former usually predominating. When Haile Gebrselassie burns his 55- to 60-second 400s during workouts as he prepares to break his own 5K world record, for example, most of the energy created during those fast 400s is produced aerobically, not anaerobically. The truth is that the two systems of energy creation work together, even during the most intense, so-called 'anaerobic' mesocycle of your training (unless your workouts consist solely of 10-second sprints, separated by long recoveries).

So, instead of worrying about developing raw anaerobic capability, you need to think about gradually increasing your power (your ability to cycle, swim, ski, skate, run, or row more quickly). A lot of that boosted power will come not from the development of 'anaerobic capacity' but simply from having a higher VO2max, because more oxygen processed per minute by muscle cells means more energy created per minute, more muscular force exerted per arm or leg movement, and higher movement velocities. Some will also come from improved economy, because better economy means being able to move up to higher speeds without incurring greater oxygen 'cost'. Some will come from lifting lactate threshold, because higher thresholds allow quality speeds to be sustained for longer periods of time. And some will come from better neuromuscular co-ordination - improved reactivity of the nervous system and a heightened ability to utilize available muscular force to drive the body forward, rather than stabilize uncoordinated body parts or waste energy on non-propulsive movements. And of course, some will come from pure strength - the ability to stabilize the body and generate large amounts of force. It's stupid to think that speed arises merely from 'anaerobic conditioning'.

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