Cycling and Endurance Sport Training Information

Periodization: The Art and Science of Planning a Successful Season Part 2

In part 1 of my Periodization discussion, I reviewed the initial steps and basic principles that need to be considered when planning your season. I’ll now expand on the details of those principles and describe how you can arrive at your ultimate, ever evolving plan. This last point is critical, because life is unpredictable; by allowing yourself to accept that your ultimate seasonal goals, or destination, may be achievable by numerous paths, then you can better adjust your training objectively.

Defining the Periodization Principles

Before getting to the realization of the plan, it is important to understand the basic principles of your plan. In terms of training plan construction, I look at the intensity I want a person to do plus the volume of the week; there are no hard and fast rules here, but I usually base the numbers around a typical 15 hour week that includes sprints, intervals and endurance training, plus one race that’s about 3-3.5 hr long. Again, these are just guidelines and not set in stone. However, load must take into account the goals you set forth for a given training cycle – block of training lasting 3-6 weeks, and reflect your conditioning level (i.e., do training you’re prepared for physically and mentally).

The hallmark of any periodization plan is a PROGRESSIVE BUILD-UP AND VARIATION IN TRAINING LOAD (volume & intensity); this is often referred to as the principle of OVERLOAD. Overload can be created by increasing volume (e.g., time, number/length of intervals, etc…) intensity, concentration of the number of training sessions in a period of time – also known as load density, this can include riding a stage race, or by riding 6 days/week instead of just 4. Classically, training periodization has been illustrated as a wave pattern, where training load increases steadily in steps, then decreases to allow for compensation, or recovery. While there are more complex, and perhaps (occasionally) more efficacious ways to structure training cycles, the wave pattern is the simplest means to plan a schedule and effective for the majority of athletes. They key to overload is to provide a continuous challenge to your body with training in order to provide continuous progress. Your long-term plan looks ahead at your goals and structures your schedule to allow for a progressive build up.

Related to progressive build-up is the TIMING OF APPROPRIATE TRAINING during your build up. The right training at the right time should be considered when writing your plan, and must account for your individual fitness and strengths and weaknesses and no one else’s. Athlete’s typically fall short in this area because many feel they must train hard all the time to get better, when, in reality, less can equal more. While most of us can be better than we are, most try to be better than they can be WHEN they cannot. Case in point:

For years I aimed for spring races training harder and harder every year in college until one year I missed an entire season due to illness. Had I acknowledged that I needed more base, less threshold and above threshold training and just more relaxation, perhaps my summer racing might have been that much better. I’m not telling anyone to give up his or her goals, rather, I’m saying you need to be able to structure your training/life to meet those goals, which many cannot. If spending time in a warm climate is something you need to do to build your base and you can do it, then do it. Otherwise it may be time to find new, later season goals.

Assuming you’re able to build your base fitness effectively, then you will need to structure training correctly. In general, volume increases, then intensity, then specific preparation for your Peak Races begin. Remember, your base includes both your low end endurance, or aerobic capacity, and your very high end anaerobic capacity; neglecting either one ultimately weakens the other and your long-term progress. Focus on these areas first then start adding some threshold and aerobic power work. In a later article, I’ll discuss in detail the specifics of training different “zones”.

DURABILITY OF FORM refers to the need to consider just how long your want to be at your best. In most cases, the longer the build up (i.e., the more base miles you have), the longer, more stable peak. Put differently, coaches and applied scientists often use the term fragile form; riders who have an outstanding peak and then fall apart shortly thereafter, or those who train very intensely early in the season, blistering fields in the first few races before fading to a distant memory are good examples. Riders who spend a great deal of time building up can often maintain their form for a number of weeks. The take home message for durability is that your best seasons will come from a good base that can sustain you through many races at top form.

An optimal balance between training and recovery is a critical component to any program, but from a periodization viewpoint it is not a critical component. The most important aspect here is to structure each training cycle with adequate compensatory periods following each training cycle, and each peak.

Now that we have discussed the basics, you should have set your primary goal(s) for the first peak and gotten some baseline data on your fitness. The next steps put you pieces together into a cohesive plan:

1. Determine how long your PEAK period will be, then how much time you’ll need prior to your peak to induce your peak. Typically, most riders want to reach a high level of fitness and hold it a while to get multiple results, so you’ll likely choose 4 weeks for your peak period, preceded by 3-6 weeks of specific preparation, or 7-10 weeks total.
2. Once the peak period is set, you’ll now want to fill in your remaining dates with key preparation races (smaller, more local races can wait), as well as training camps, testing sessions and important, life altering distractions; college and junior athletes will want to schedule in exam dates, along with other can’t be missed events (e.g., graduation). The idea here is that note details that could alter your overall plan and should be accounted for.
3. After all the details are filled in, its time to start splitting your first Macrocycle –the sum parts of various training cycles leading up to a peak, into training periods and cycles. A training period is a block of training aimed at producing an overall training effect; for example, General Prep is geared towards building the basic components of your fitness, Specific Prep encompasses training specific areas to reach peak form, Competition and Peak periods can be used interchangeably, but I use Peak to refer to a short peak period, and Competition a longer peak. A cycle, also called mesocycle, is a specific training block lasting 3-6 weeks where you focus on a small number of training areas, like leg speed and sprinting, or climbing. Figure 3. illustrates each of these components.

You can now take the time to note what areas you will focus on during each training cycle, as well as set your minutes for each microcycle (a 7 day week for most of us). Yes, this can seem a bit presumptuous, and maybe ambitious, but that’s OK, because part of the reason you take the time to plan is help motivate you to train. Knowing what you face ahead of you, helps you realize what steps to take when. If you feel comfortable setting volumes and loads for the whole first macrocycle, fine, but if you just plan the first cycle, that’s OK too.