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Saturday, December 1, 2007
Periodized Training for Peak Performance
Greater Reading, PA
By: Cody Keeney
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Photo(s) By: Kyle Danztler/MyActionPortraits.com
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Cody Keeney
So your sports season is over. For a few of you the season climaxed with a championship victory. For the rest of you it ended before you had hoped. Although the season is over, your competitive juices are still flowing; and you are determined to come back bigger, faster, and stronger next season. But where do you start? It is a known fact that people with an organized plan will succeed far more than those who do not have a plan. This is also true when it comes to sports conditioning. An athlete who follows a well designed program will be more effective at preparing and conditioning for the upcoming season. A well designed sports conditioning program strongly implements the idea of periodization.
What is periodization? It is an annual conditioning approach that divides the annual plan into smaller phases which are easier to manage. Within these phases, emphasis is placed on different aspects of strength, speed, and endurance. The final goal is to produce a sport-specific quality such as power, power endurance, or muscular endurance. The periodization of strength, speed, and endurance is the manipulation of different training phases with specific emphasis, in a specific sequence, with the goal of creating maximum sport conditioning. Every athlete should have an organized conditioning plan that takes into account the athlete’s competition schedule and the events for which he/she needs to be in peak condition. By clearly defining the seasons and the phases within each season, a conditioning plan can be designed to maximize an athlete’s peak performance.
One of the reasons why periodization is so successful is how an athlete’s motor abilities (strength, speed, endurance) are trained during the program. For example, a football player without a periodized conditioning plan might work on maximum speed from the end of the season until the beginning of the next without developing a foundation. Without a proper base, the athlete will reach a plateau in their maximum speed abilities. All but a select few sports require a combination of motor abilities. Periodization will develop the correct combination of motor abilities and is the key to developing maximum conditioning for any sport. Take, for example, a baseball pitcher. The athlete must first possess full range of mobility, particularly in the shoulder joint. The athlete must also have good balance to stabilize on one foot during their motion. Once this level of general conditioning, mobility and stability is accomplished the athlete can begin to focus on increasing strength to add speed and power to the weight shift which will generate greater ball speed. Finally, the athlete will now have the necessary base level of fitness and motor skills to begin learning control and skill. Focus on the smaller details of a sport-specific skill is the final step in the periodized process.
Periodization has been one of the more important training theories related to sports conditioning over the past 30 years and is the key concept for maximum annual conditioning. It is especially effective at sequencing the development of motor abilities and maximizing training efforts. By following a year-long periodized conditioning program, an athlete will maximize their training efforts and enter their next season at peak performance.
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