Periodization: Beginners to the Elite

When you start to train, you may feel great… rather quickly. When you go from training 0x/ week to training 3+x/week, you can pretty much do anything, and see some acute results. You’re excited, and want to keep training, but then you notice, you’re not seeing those results from the beginning. Why? you’re working just as hard, training the same amount of time per week, hitting all your big lifts, but that’s just the thing! You need progress to progress!

Periodization is just a fancy term for planning in the strength and conditioning world. The variables you can manipulate, and track are endless! Some will claim they have the best scheme to develop strength, others will say their method is best for endurance, but at the end of the day one plan will work for one athlete and not for another. This is where getting to know your athlete is vital. To create a plan that works for you, we use variables such as: your goals, current training status, requirements of your sport/ life, how much time we have to train, and time of year. These factors will allow us to select the correct plan for you!

Beginners are like a sponge, and as I mentioned, you can pretty much do anything for a little bit and see results. Adaptation to your training routine will take place almost immediately as long as you’re sleeping and eating appropriately. This will not last long however. Eventually you will need to map out your plan. In my opinion, beginners need to spend blocks of time focusing on one goal at a time. When mapping out your plan, you want each phase to build on the previous. If your end goal is speed, but have the stiffness of wet paper, you can sprint all day long with only minimal improvements in speed. You need strength, and if you’re past puberty, you more than likely need size to attain some strength! In the beginning, the more time you spend developing size and the strength, the higher the ceiling you will have for speed development. How this would look in a periodized format would be, hypertrophy training followed by strength, to power, and finally speed training. This is called “linear” or “traditional” periodization.

Hypertrophy training will involve higher volume schemes at lower weight loads, and as you move down the phases volume will decrease and load will increase. Undulating volume and load either weekly, or biweekly is termed “non-linear” or “undulating” periodization. Training multiple phases at the same time, while undulating volume and load is termed “undulating conjugate” or “undulating concurrent” periodization

-Hypertrophy: 3-5 sets x 6-12 reps with loads between 60-80% of an athletes 1 rep max

-Strength: 3-8 sets x 1-6 reps with loads between 80-100% of an athletes 1 rep max

-Power: 3-10 sets x 2-5 reps with loads between 30-85% of an athletes 1 rep max

-Speed: 3-10 sets x 2-10 reps with loads between 0-30% of an athletes 1 rep max.

Following this format will allow the novice athlete to develop size which will help bolster is strength capabilities. When the loads are higher, strength development can take place. With a foundation of strength, the athlete’s power capabilities will increase; which also means their speed ability will increase as well.

If you have 12 weeks to train, traditionally you’ll spend about 3-4 weeks on each phase, broken up with a deload week between each phase giving the athlete a chance to recover and adapt. The younger the athlete, the longer you can spend in hypertrophy and strength. A true novice will need to spend time learning how to train in a pattern development phase. The training parameters can range from anywhere between 2-6 sets x 6-20 reps (quite a large spectrum, I know). The novice needs time to practice the movement, learn how to develop force/ intent with the movement, and demonstrate consistent rep-to-rep coordination before moving to any other phase.

The intermediate to elite level athletes will train the same qualities listed above what could change is how long they are in a particular phase, and how many phases they train concurrently (strength and speed at the same time) in their training cycle. Spending too much time in one phase will fatigue that quality you are training to develop, and that is totally necessary to see improvement. However, if you got an elite level guy who is looking for a job at the professional level, they need to be ready to go at any moment in time. The elite level athlete will have a sufficient training age that allows them to spend 1-2 weeks in a strength phase, and focus on speed and power. The larger the training age, the less time you will need to spend in hypertrophy and strength. Checkout the training scheme below for 3 athletes as an example.

Beginner- 4 weeks pattern development, 4 weeks hypertrophy, 1 week deload, 4 weeks strength, 1 week deload, 4 weeks power (traditional periodization)

Intermediate- 3 weeks pattern development, 2 weeks hypertrophy, 1 week deload, 2 weeks hypertrophy, 2 weeks strength, 1 week deload, 2 weeks power, 2 weeks strength, 1 week deload, 2 weeks speed (biweekly undulating periodization)

Elite- 1 week pattern development, 1 week hypertrophy/strength, 1 week strength/power, 1 week power/speed, 1 week deload, 1 week hypertrophy/strength, 1 week strength/power, 1 week power/speed, 1 week deload, 1 week strength/power, 2 weeks power/ speed, 1 week strength, 1 week deload. (weekly undulating concurrent periodization)

You can even have daily undulation periodization, where the training emphasis changes day to day! At the end of the day, you have to know who you are working with. This will help you decide which plan will work best for your situation. If you only have 8 weeks to train an elite level athlete a traditional plan probably isn’t the best idea, but may be perfect for a novice. We have barely scratched the surface of what goes into a training plan. There is so many other variables that were’t even mentioned. This is truly just the outline of a few different examples for a power dominate athlete. What happens if your goal isn’t to be the fastest on the field? Maybe your training goal is to run a marathon, in which case your training plan would look totally different! Know your goal, and work backwards from there ;).

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If you want to watch an incredible video on periodization, from a great coach, click here.