Is Periodization Hurting Your Training Plan?

Periodization has become the Holy Grail of sport training. Don’t all the best athletes and coaches utilize different phases of training at different times of the year?

The concept, in theory, makes great sense. Training should be built around the human body’s normal mechanisms of training adaptation and recovery. Training should be designed in order to optimize gains in performance while minimizing the risk of injury.

But the traditional application of periodization is lacking. As many other issues in sport training, it has a good basis in physiology, but incomplete interpretation and application. So is periodization hurting your training plan? And if so, what can we do to optimize it?

Perhaps the most important aspect of human physiology to consider is this: training is just a stimulus that fosters a training response. If you have no training stimulus – or an inappropriate or insufficient training stimulus – you will not attain the desired training response. There is no rocket science involved there. This is the physiological basis for periodization.

Here is an example of a traditional training periodization approach that has been used with runners, triathletes, and other endurance athletes over the years:

Prep Phase: 4 to 8 weeks total, high frequency of workouts that have very little intensity, low total volume of training

Base Phase: 12 to 24 weeks total, high frequency of workouts that have moderate intensity, moderate to high total volume of training

Build Phase: 4 to 8 weeks total, moderate-high frequency of workouts that have heavy intensity, moderate total volume of training

Peak/Race Phase: 3 to 5 weeks total, moderate-high frequency of workouts that have heavy intensity, low total volume of training

This traditional training approach has some significant issues that limit its training value:

1. Detraining: Detraining can occur as readily as (if not more so than) the training response. If you stop applying the necessary training stimulus – for whatever reason, planned or otherwise – then you will start to de-train. Traditional plans implement phases of long duration (4 to 24 weeks) focusing on certain training stimuli, while in the meantime others are detraining. Higher intensity workouts are in an 8 to 12 week phase (including the peak/race phase), while power output is left to detrain for the remainder of the annual cycle.

Ever wonder why you are going from year to year and not continuing to progress? Detraining may have been built into the structure of your plan!

2. Under-recovery: A high frequency of workouts is of value, but not so high to prevent adequate training recovery and adaptation. If there is no recovery, there is no training adaptation. If there is no training adaptation, then is there really any reason to keep hammering your body into submission with more and more training sessions?

Ever wonder why you have sustained an injury that has limited your ability to train? Most of the injuries incurred by endurance athletes are a function of their training program. Under-recovery may have been built into the structure of your plan!

3. Intensity – or lack thereof: I mentioned it earlier - higher intensity workouts are in an 8 to 12 week phase (including the peak/race phase), while power output is left to detrain for the remainder of the annual cycle. Yet most physiological mechanisms respond favorably to intensity – given an appropriate environment in which to do so. Intensity is your friend, not your foe.

If the primary limiter of performance is neuromuscular, and if power output starts to detrain within a 7 to 10 day period, then why are athletes and coaches spending the vast majority of their training year NOT addressing these mechanisms of performance? Again, this problem is traditionally built into the plan from the start, so it should be expected that athletes will fail to progress at a rate consistent with the capacity of human physiology.

If you are starting to wonder about the value of training periodization, don’t worry: it truly is one of the cornerstones of an effective and optimal training plan. However, like any other training principle, if not properly utilized, it may cause more harm than good.

In my next training article, I will discuss a number of ways to optimize the framework of your training – so periodization can truly work for you instead of against you.

Photo credits: Wikipedia; training response image from RunSmart:A Comprehensive Approach To Injury-Free Running