Periodisation isn’t a new concept, with its origins going all the way back to Ancient Greek times and the preparation of athletes for the Olympic Games. In more recent times periodisation has evolved with the demands of modern day sport, sport science, and coaching practice.
Traditional periodisation methods focused mainly on the cycling of volume and intensity in order to bring athletes to a peak for competition. As we mentioned in our previous post, athletes would work through phases of accumulation, transmutation and realisation, timed to bring them to a peak. As the modern sporting calendar has evolved into a multipeak season this method of periodisation also evolved, and two common methods of periodisation used today are the undulating method, or block method. In this post we will take a look at each method and consider the pro’s and con’s. The key think to remember throughout the post is that specificity is key, and you should use the method that fits best with your athletes and their sport.
Undulating periodisation works around the idea that the training stimulus is changed on a weekly or daily basis, allowing a relatively large number of adaptations to training to be achieved at once, whilst still working through periods of high volume and low intensity and periods of low volume and high intensity. The change in training stimulus can be done on a weekly (weekly undulating periodisation) or daily (daily undulating periodisation) basis. So how might this look? Here’s a basic example of how a weekly undulating periodisation (WUP) mesocycle might look.
Week 1 – 5x8-10 reps @65-75%1RM
Week 2 – 5x5-6 reps @75-85%1RM
Week 3 – 5x3-4 reps @85-95% 1RM
Week 4 – 5x2-3 reps @50-60% 1RM
Week 5 – Deload/recovery week.
The mesocycle is therefore covering all aspects of developing strength and power, from hypertrophy on week 1, strength on week 2 and 3 and then power on week 4. Daily undulating periodisation (DUP) works in the same way, however changes in stimulus occur on a daily instead of weekly basis. DUP can also be manipulated in a way that a wider range of training stimulus can be trained within the week, for example as opposed to just focusing on strength, day 1 may have a strength focus, day 2 may focus on aerobic capacity and day 3 may focus on anaerobic capacity. When you think about that for a second, it doesn’t all sound to dissimilar to CrossFit does it?
In a team sport setting, where athletes need to peak on a weekly basis and maintain a level of performance across a large range of performance metrics, DUP done properly is a great tool. Taking rugby for example, where players need to maintain a level of strength, speed, power, aerobic capacity and anaerobic capacity for anywhere up to 9 months of the year, using DUP in season makes perfect sense. The downside of WUP or DUP, is that in elite athletes with a high level of training experience, the frequent changing of training method may not provide enough of a stimulus to cause adaptation, and in some cases may even lead to a decline in performance.
Now lets apply that to CrossFit. The average man or women starts CrossFit having had little to no exposure to high intensity exercise, the Olympic lifts, or gymnastics and enter a setting where they rotate between the various methods of training on a daily basis. The upside of this is it minimises the risk of injury, as if the programming is thought through there isn’t enough of one thing to lead to overuse injuries or burn out, as well as providing enough of a stimulus that consistent adaptations occur across the board. The same is true for beginner athletes in all sports, or young athletes who are beginning to use strength and conditioning methods to boost their sports performance.
The downside of this comes 1-2 years down the line, when the body has got used too and can tolerate doing 5x5 back squats once every 10 days, and the gains train begins to grind to a halt. Enter the block method.
The block method involves much more concentrated training stimulus, each with a specific goal. As opposed to changing the training stimulus on a daily or weekly basis, 1-2 training stimuli will be focused on for a 4-6 week period before moving onto the next. For an example of this see below –
Week 1-4 – 5x8-10 @65-75% 1RM
Week 5 – deload
Week 6-10 – 5x3-4 @85-95% 1RM
Week 11 – deload
Week 12-16 – 5x2-3 @50-60% 1RM
As you can see, we are still working through hypertrophy, strength and then power, but we a focusing on each stimulus for a longer period of time. Again taking this back to a CrossFit setting we may work through periods where we focus on strength, aerobic capacity or anaerobic capacity but instead of trying to develop all of these things at once we do it one (or two) at a time.
The benefit of this is of course we are spending more time providing a specific stimulus for adaptation, whilst taking away any training that may conflict with what we are trying to achieve, in theory leading to greater adaptation. However just like WUP or DUP, there are downsides too.
Spending a prolonged period of time focusing on strength for example, may increase the risk of injury or burnout. Hence why it is important to make sure the athlete has the physical capacity to follow this kind of programme. Then there is “the fear”. Whilst focusing on one or two things can lead to great improvements, inevitably the areas that aren’t been worked on may start to slide a little. This is to be expected, but that doesn’t mean your athlete will like it! This is where having a clear season long or even multi season long plan can help, so you can show the athlete where they need to peak, and how they’re going to get there.
In team sports, or CrossFit, the athletes need to be at or close to their peak capabilities for a wide range of components of fitness all at the same time to perform at their best. The key to making block periodisation work in this setting, is to make sure the sequencing of the block is correct so that this can be achieved. The answer to that problem, lies in knowing the restitution period of each component of fitness.
Put simply, this refers to the length of time adaptations to each training stimulus will remain once training has stopped, and is different for each different adaptation. This is something we will talk about in more detail in our next blog post, so stay tuned!
As we mentioned in our previous post, it is well worth planning your season in advance. The technical term for this is periodisation, and we are going to dive into this in a little more detail in this post.
Periodisation simply refers to breaking down your year, into periods of recovery, training and competition. This allows us to ensure we reach our physical peak at the right time, without hammering our body all year round and ending up in a chronically fatigued state. Before we go any further, here is a few technical terms to get your head around.
Macro cycle – This refers to the entire training period. This can be a single season, or in Olympic sports can be the entire Olympic cycle (4 years).
Mesocycle – This is a particular chunk of the training year, typically 1-3 months, which will have a specific focus.
Microcycle – this is the smallest phase of the training period, 1-2 weeks, and contains the nitty gritty details about how your training will look, eg. sets, reps and rest periods.
Mesocycles are broken down into 3 phases, an accumulation phase, a transmutation phase and a realisation phase. The microcycles fit into these different phases and will match up to the desired goal of that weeks training.
When it comes to planning the year I like to look at the big picture first, when will the athlete be competing, training and recovering and then work backwards from there, where I will then plan the mesocycles. As we mentioned mesocycles are a specific training period, where we may focus on creating a specific adaptation, or we may look to maintain a number of adaptations if we are in a competition phase. The microcycles then fit into the mesocycle, and involve all the details as to how we are going to achieve the aim of the mesocycle.
So why do all this? Planning your year this way firstly keeps coach and athlete on the same page with specific goals to work towards. This can help when motivation to train might be going through a bit of a lull. It also means we are building towards competition in a sequential way, with the main goal of peaking when competition starts. Exactly what this looks like will vary from athlete to athlete and sport to sport. With some sports such as weightlifting requiring a very specific peak, to CrossFit where a large number of components of fitness are required to peak at the same time for optimal performance.
Planning ahead also means that any particular weaknesses of the athlete are ironed out, or given the time to be improved, as early in the training cycle as possible. Training time is limited in all athletes, but particularly those of you who don’t have the luxury of training 4-5 hours per day. This means that you need to prioritise your time to your biggest weaknesses, which may mean some of your strengths will slide a little bit. By doing this as far away from competition as possible, it gives us time to bring your strengths back up and make you a better all round athlete.
Finally, planning ahead can help prevent you entering competition under cooked, or over fatigued. As you approach competition it is easy to get sucked into doing more and more intense training, however this is likely to lead to you being burnt out come game day. By planning and sequencing your training appropriately, we can make sure you have adapted to training and then recovered from the training enough to perform at your best.
Of course there may be a need to make adjustments to the plan as you progress through the year, but engaging in this process in advance and with your coach, can lead to you being as prepared as possible when it really counts. In the next blog post, I will discuss some of the different styles of periodisation, the pro's and con's and why/who I might use each style with and when.
The huge growth in CrossFit and accessible competitive CrossFit has lead to a surge in competitions. Previously there where the big three competitions, the open, regionals and the games, and your season ended when you’d gone as far as you could go. There were also 2-3 national competitions which tended to be well spread through the year. These days, with team, pairs and individual competitions you could end up competing almost every weekend. This is great at first, but in the long run is it good for you and your long-term progress?
There are many upsides to competing in CrossFit, but there are also downsides too. For 99.9% of CrossFitters the sport doesn’t pay the bills, so alongside the stress of competition you also need to manage work stress, life stress and training stress. Of course, it is incredibly difficult to manage all 4 things and still give your body the recovery time it needs to adapt. So, if you want to progress as an athlete giving your body a break and planning your season is essential.
Every sport has an off season, and in most sports, whatever the level, it is enforced by the competition calendar. In CrossFit however, this isn’t the case as there are competitions all year, meaning you need to selectively pick and choose the competitions you want to do, and build your off season into the plan. Typically, I wouldn’t advise competing more than 3 times a year, ideally well spread although practically this isn’t always possible. Alongside this, I would advise designating an off-season period of 2-3 months.
So what is an off season? The term simply refers to a period where you aren’t competing, but what goes into it?
Firstly, it’s about making sure you give your body the time it needs to recover. Recovery is a multi-faceted thing and goes deeper than just whether you feel sore. True recovery allows the normalising of hormone levels, nervous system recovery and mental rejuvenation. Depending on the intensity of your training or competition, this can take anything from 2 weeks to months.
Secondly, the off season is a time to really work on your weaknesses. During the competition period, when training time is limited, you want to maintain a level of performance in all aspects of fitness, so you can capitalise on your strengths and minimise the damage your weaknesses do to your overall placing. This is great, but eventually you will reach a point where you stop making any improvements.
At this point, you need to spend a significant period of time dedicating a large chunk of your training time to your weaknesses. The off season is the perfect time to do this as if your strengths start to slide you can pick them back up later in the year in time for competition. The net results of this is that by the time the season comes around again, your strengths are still strong but your weaknesses are less weak, making you a better all round athlete.
And that’s the name of this game right?
So take the time once you’ve finished your next competition to sit down and plan what your going to do next. Take a look at your strengths and weaknesses and decide what you need to attack. But don’t get too excited and dive straight in. Give your body a break first, it will thank you for it in the long run.