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Periodization part 1
PETE GLADDEN
Pete’s World
Published: November 28, 2016
Now’s the time of year when I often hear endurance athletes lamenting about the cold, grey weather that’s about to envelope our immediate future, wishing they could somehow transport themselves to warmer climes for the winter, places like Florida, Arizona and California. Their longing for such a Star Trek-like maneuver centers on the unlimited outdoor training and racing opportunities the Sunbelt has to offer, with nary a hint of cold weather to slow them down or hold them back.
This is where I like to put the brakes on their California Dreaming by hitting them with a good old-fashioned Ohio snowball, explaining how lucky we are to live in a region where there ARE seasons, and where we ARE forced to structure our training and racing in periods, just like the periods in a year. That’s right, winter’s just the right time for an off-season period. Sounds kind of crazy, and it certainly doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun, but fortunately or unfortunately it’s true. For example, if you’re a cyclist living in So Cal, it’s very easy to do nothing but ride outdoors, training and racing as hard as you want year round, year after year after year. Sweet to think about, yet eventually that kind of behavior not only derails your fitness, but it also derails your ability to continue to improve, and to be as proficient as possible in your sport as you could be.
Take it from pro endurance athletes. They’ll tell you the human body can’t be “in training” at every practice, on every day. And moreover, the human body can’t race week in and week out on a year-round basis. In order get better, you must spend some time each year adhering to two very important tenants: Relaxing and recovering, and working on the basic elements, the nuts and bolts, of your sport. That’s why I often tell athletes, “Do what the pros do,” and what the pros do is incorporate an off-season into every training cycle - year. They make sound training and racing decisions that are backed up by sports scientists. Remember, a professional athletes monetary success depends on training smart.
And training smart means putting into action the concept of “periodization,” which has everything to do with this off-season period I’m talking about. Now, the original concept of periodization was developed in the former Eastern Bloc countries in the late 1950s to optimize athletes’ adaptations to resistance training. Periodization models have metamorphosed over the last 60 years, and are now utilized in virtually all sports. Now for our purposes, let’s look at periodization in a very general sense, as it applies to the division of a year-round sports program into distinct phases of training, phases that typically include an off-season, preseason, in-season and postseason.
It just so happens our dreaded Ohio winters coincide perfectly with off-season phases, OR at the very least postseason phases, within this yearly periodization plan. Off-seasons should include plenty of rest and recovery, and plenty of skill work. So if you’re a swimmer, runner, cyclist etc., then that means lots of R & R along with sports specific drill work. The key here is to concentrate on the skills that tend to get overlooked when you’re in the pre-season and in-season, and to accumulate the true recovery you need after a sports season ends.
On the R & R side, the off-season heals the mind to prevent burnout, and heals the body to prevent injuries. It’s a time to analyze, to see what went right and what went wrong, and to use that information to modify your next season in order to improve your performances. This is especially crucial if you’d just had a season plagued with aches and pains and/or lacked gains in performance. These could be signs that you’d gone too hard, too fast, too often, with too much volume - and you never took an off-season.
Ironically, all this off-season protocol talk is exceeding hard to put into action when you reside in season-less Sunbelt environments where there’s always the temptation to keep the foot on the gas pedal. So don’t feel cheated because of winter, rather embrace it for the needed changes it initiates. The next column I’ll delve further into the off-season by offering some sports-specific drill work and recovery strategies.
Pete Gladden, owner/operator of Excel Adventure, Sport & Photo, is a freelance writer and photographer who melds his passion for adventure, endurance sports and fitness with journalism. He's also an elite level cycling coach, an NSCA certified personal trainer and a professional backpacing, cycling and rock climbing guide. Pete can be reached at pjgladd@aol.com.