Topic: How necessary is periodization for continued progress?

[ViKtoricus]

Periodization is a socialistic concept which ignores the individual and idolizes the "expert" who insanely believes they can plan every detail of another person's life. Of course, inevitably when perodization fails, the excuse is that the planner simply needs "more control" over the life of the planned....

You know, I was reading Serious Strength Training by Tudor Bompa several months ago and I remember saying to myself "What a load of bullsh**." His other book is cool, but that particular one is just bad.

[Arturo Gómez]

Periodization is a large concept. I will speak about periodization in weightlifting as we saw since 1980.
Sofisticated and very rigid programs of training, assuming a very homogeneous team, and I suspect, without a scientifical basis.
Those programs were generally oriented to dates of competition, and to a good administration of the coach. Probably they are good if you have a universe of discartable athletes at your disposal, but fails if you want to apply it to an individue in particular.
Those plains born, as Chris said, in socialist countries, but they were imposed in the non - socialist 3rd world, with total blindness of the differentes work environments and objectives. The results, obviously, desaster. People thought they were magic and forgot think with the own brain.
However, today probably they may be used as a reference for conjectures, ideas, and experimental design for reserch

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

Yes, athletes are not waste material to be discarded. Athletes are the "capital goods" of weightlifting production. If you understand this fact and you understand the fundamental fact that division of labor increases production, then you understand periodization is a "pipe dream" of control freaks and poor coaches. Great coaches don't have to plan for extended period because they know the athlete's strengths and weaknesses, can relate to their athlete and their individual personality and life circumstances, and can objectively evaluate the athletes' interests due to common voluntary pursuit. In other words, periodization is a very harmful to pursue chimera.

[ViKtoricus]

Yes, athletes are not waste material to be discarded. Athletes are the "capital goods" of weightlifting production. If you understand this fact and you understand the fundamental fact that division of labor increases production, then you understand periodization is a "pipe dream" of control freaks and poor coaches. Great coaches don't have to plan for extended period because they know the athlete's strengths and weaknesses, can relate to their athlete and their individual personality and life circumstances, and can objectively evaluate the athletes' interests due to common voluntary pursuit. In other words, periodization is a very harmful to pursue chimera.

But periodization is just as American as Breasts!!

lol. kidding.

[Arturo Gómez]

Off course, is a large subject.
One thing is if is necessary ou optimal that each athlete have a periodization in his training. And other, how this was applied in weightlifting in the past years.

[Andy Dick]

This is a very loaded topic.  I will give my two cents because I am the great evil that uses periodization a lot.  I will try to keep it brief and to make sense which will be difficult.

Periodization (as per the NSCA) - the varying or cycling of training specificity, intensity, and volume to achieve peak levels of conditioning.  Planned variations of the program design variables associated with exercise help athletes avoid staleness and overtraining while encouraging continuous adaptations to progressively more demanding training stimuli.

I would first of say almost every strength coach does some sort of this unless they do the exact same program, with the exact same rep and set scheme only with only intensity as the thing that changes by increasing.

I think periodization is not given enough credit.  I think it is a principle that has been used and abused too much.  I feel as Chris said under the wrong coach it can be detrimental to the individual.  I feel it was a guideline to shape workouts based on what scientifically seems to work.  Most research studies look at training methods and will say like method A increased strength in 90% of individuals 30+5.753lbs (since not everyone will see exactly the same gains)  in 5 weeks as opposed to method B which may have not seen the same results increase or the same results in the same number of individuals.  This is abused because if the outliers are not taken into consideration these people will suffer.  The outliers are people that may have seen >30lbs or <30lbs increase.  For these individuals they need a different program because either they can be pushed more to see more results or it is not working for them to get the same results.

Periodization seeks breaks the year down into phases, focused around competitions usually with 1 goal competition in mind were the athlete will be at their strongest and freshest to lift at their absolute best.  (Although it also compensates for all competitions just usually with 1 main goal one in mind).  It breaks the year down into phases (focusing on size, absolute strength, power, or endurance).  It is up to the coach to see what sport needs which principles and apply them correctly.  For example, why on earth would an Olympic lifter ever do lifting for endurance (>15 reps)?  Usually you should not see size work occurring during a competition period because the volume is too much.

The other trick with many sports is that many other factors have to balance in as well, such as time devoted to speed and agility training along with time devoted to practice of the sport.  Weightlifting is a different breed because doing the extra things outside of actually lifting weights will have little carry over to the sport.  The issue I have with Chris’ view is that his basis for disliking periodization is the inefficient coach misusing periodization instead of periodization itself.

I will agree using periodization can be used in a socialist manner.  I do it a lot.  Being a strength coach at a high school, we can have up to 200+ kids through our weight room in a given evening.  Periodization allows a coach to say you kids are going to follow this rep, set, and weight scheme in their respective section of the sport season (in-season, off-season, pre-season etc.).  However, at no point do we say that they must strictly follow the weight guidelines.  We do make them follow the exercises listed for each day and the volume otherwise all our guys would do is come in and do bench and arm work for tons of volume and leave.  We take into account that the athlete may be able to do more weight or less on a given day and we allow them to adjust accordingly.

When I write the weightlifting team program I have the same general plan.  However, this varies differently because with this program I adjust their weights for them weekly and daily if I am able.  But this is very difficult and time consuming (even with the 40 or so guys on the team this last spring).  At the beginning of my work day Monday I am hard pressed to get the weights written in the 2 hours before it gets busy, and that is only for the Olympic lifts themselves.  This is also extremely difficult because that means I must see at least 1 of their sets in order to determine how their weights would progress or if we should progress at all because of form issues.  I will also usually only set weights up to the last 2 sets allowing room to adjust depending on how they are lifting (I usually find I am the one telling the kids to increase weights more than they are asking me to do so).

To say it periodization is garbage I don’t think it is, because you are varying training stimuli based on the goals of the program.  The ultimate goal of the coach is to find what works best for the given athlete and run with it.  But there needs to be some sort of plan in place in order to adjust it towards meeting said goals.  To stick rigidly to a program with no room for adjustment or to expect everyone to fit exactly into the same mold is unrealistic.  The strength coaches I have learned under and worked with none of them have been this rigid in thinking or have been rigid in thinking the way Chris argues against it.  I think if you would ask a coach that properly applies this principle and is an effective coach they would say the same thing: that to leave no room for modification would result in an inefficient program.

Most periodization I have encountered does not plan the minute details of the entire year and sticks rigidly.  Most entails goals of they year, the goal of each “cycle,” then the month or so of training is planned.  I agree with Chris arguments if they were reversed.  The poor coach is the problem not the plan.

[ViKtoricus]

The way I see it, periodization should not be used if one is capable of making progress in a linear fashion (either week by week, month by month, or year by year.).

I also don't see how periodization will be highly beneficial to powerlifters and Olympic Weightlifters since their goals are SIMPLISTIC. A goal of a powerlifter is the same thing with every other powerlifter: Lift the most amount of weight possible with the three lifts, either by staying in a weight class or going up (rarely going down). Olympic weightlifters are the same way, but it's with the Snatch and the Clean+Jerk.

Here is the better question! If we can train the Snatch, Clean+Jerk, and squat simultaneously, why the heck would we need to divide our training into different phases??

If things get stagnant, it means we are ready for a bigger training load (plus, exercise selection, exercise order, training intensities and volume can vary week by week, which can prevent staleness.).

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

I wouldn't say periodization is evil, lol- unless it was enforced with physical violence. But, my criticisms of the *model* have nothing to do with what coach is using it. I simply believe a more anarchistic approach is more effective- most especially for the talented and young who are inevitably held back by periodization.