Maximise Your Fitness & Recovery

Here’s how to incorporate the Principle of Periodisation into your programme design

- Shayamal Vallabhjee

WITH THE six universally accepted scientific exercise training principles—we’ve already discussed Adaptation, Progressive Overload, Specificity and Reversibility, also known as the De-Training Effect—we know that while rest is important for recovery from training, extended periods of rest can reduce an individual’s level of physical fitness and return them to pre-training condition.

PRINCIPLE OF PERIODISATION

This principle tackles the process of dividing an annual training calendar into specific time blocks, where each block has a particular goal and provides your body with different types of stress. This allows you to create some hard training periods and some easier periods to facilitate recovery. A training programme should be considered as ongoing and should be broken down into long- and short-term blocks or periods of time, termed “cycles.”

Breaking a programme down into cycles is helpful in prioritising your training goals and requirements. The cycles can also vary greatly in the amount of time that they span. Periodisation also helps you develop different physiological abilities during various phases of training. Periodisation is divided into three cycles...

MACRO CYCLE

The macro cycle is the longest of the three cycles and includes all four stages of a training programme (for instance, endurance, intensity, competition and recovery). Macro cycles incorporate all 52 weeks of your annual plan and provide you with a bird’s-eye view of your training regimen. The entire purpose is to facilitate long-range planning.

MESO CYCLE