Training Planning

JOHN SHEPHERD ON PERIODISATION AND GETTING YOUR ‘RECIPE’ RIGHT

THE recent IAAF World Indoor Championships was the pinnacle of the indoor season for many of the elite. Many, not all.

Quite a few athletes will not have targeted the Birmingham event, nor will they have had a significant indoor season or indeed one at all. In many ways doing an indoor season (or not) reflects the short, medium and long-term development of that particular athlete and, notably, their and their coach’s approach to periodisation (training planning) and peaking.

In terms of periodisation there are various models that can be used. You can think of periodisation as a recipe, where all the ingredients of training (weights, plyometrics, speed, endurance, technique work and so on) are mixed together to produce optimum competition performance when it matters. That is, the identified peaks for major competitions. Some approaches forgo the indoors in the aim of achieving a superior peak/peaks in the summer. And of course there are events where it’s difficult or impossible to have an indoor season in any case – such as the hammer, discus and javelin, the long hurdles and the longer distance races – although the latter can of course run cross-country or on the road.

What’s known as “traditional” periodisation, developed out of the former Eastern Bloc nations over 50 years ago, here typically one, two or three peaks are aimed for across the training year after district preparatory phases.

The USSR and GDR, for example, had research that indicated that for events, such as the high jump and sprints, a double periodisation (two peak) programme would bring elevated performance compared to a single periodisation (one peak) approach. Why? Well, quite simply with a double (or triple periodisation approach) the athlete does more specific and competition specific training.