Periodization

Our last article implied that you change the frequency of the different types of workouts throughout the season. This process, the varying your emphasis and training mix for peak performance is called periodization. Periodization hasn't really hit buzzword status for the majority of masters swimmers but it is out there. Even if you haven't heard of it yet, your coach probably has, your coach might even be using it for your training and you didn't even realize it.

Most sports use periodization in one form or another even if they don't call it that. In the triathlon world we talk about periodization up and down backwards and forwards. As these things tend to go, the popular image of periodization is a bit different than what it really is. In the popular view of periodization, you start with long and super duper easy in the offseason, do some threshold type work as things get closer and do vo2 max and other intensity stuff at the end. This is *a* form of periodization and for certain sports it works quite well, but it isn't *the* form of periodization for all sports. Most notably for long distance efforts over 3 hours or so, that form of periodization wouldn't make any sense. And why wouldn't it make sense?

There are two main ideas that lead us to use a periodized schedule:

1. Stagnation
2. Specificity

             

Introduction Phase

Rapid Adaptation Phase

Stagnation Phase

Time

    Stagnation

So when planning out a training year or season, we need to consider the stagnation effect. You can’t just bang away at a certain type of training month after month and think it will get the best performance. By changing the training mix, you can spend more time in the rapid adaptation phase shown in the graph. If you started a season and kept the training mix the same you would go through one rapid adaptation phase and that would be it. By substantially changing the training mix, you can go through more than one rapid adaptation phase per season.

Specificity

The principle of specificity is that you get better at what you train for. Or conversely to get better at something your training needs to mimic the requirements of the event as closely as possible. If you want to get better at swimming the 200 breaststroke, you should spend a good bit of time swimming the breaststroke at speeds and distances similar to the event and using the same metabolic processes you will use during that race. For a 200 breaststroker, a two hour run will have limited benefits on his breaststroke performance. For the reason why, think back to the adaptations in article 2, how many of those adaptations needed for 200 performance would be targeted by a two hour run? Not many of them actually. And what about two hours of shoveling snow? Even fewer. Two hours of playing poker? Probably none. 

In previous articles we have discussed that for most events at a typical masters swim meet, SP2 training is the most specific to what we are doing. So as we get close to the big meet we want to emphasize that type of training above the others. As the big race approaches, you want to be doing the most specific work closer to the big race. This will allow you to train the most important things right before the race. Not only in terms of energy systems and physiology, but you will also be training yourself mentally, training your pacing and even tactical skills. This is to say, since your workouts will resemble the main race, you will tax not only your energy systems as you will in the race but also your mental skills etc.

Why not nail it all year?

But why not just to SP2 work all year? Don’t mess around with anything else, just nail the SP2 work all the time? That goes back to the previous paragraph and stagnation. If you did a heavy SP2 emphasis all year you would stagnate, so you need to change up the training mix during the year. And the reason you do the SP2 emphasis last is that you want to be doing the most specific work right before the big race. In the weeks leading up to the championship meet you want to be refining your racing speed and strategy, you would not want to be putting in huge amounts of long easy yards at that point; you want to be sharpening yourself.

Typical Periodization

So what does a typical periodization schedule look like for a masters swimmer? The chart below shows a periodized schedule you might see for short course season where the final competition is THE main competition. The assumptions are that the main meet is at the very end and that there is no taper or emphasis change for mid-season meets. Another assumption is that the workout group has three or four workouts per week of an hour to 90 minutes. With more frequent workouts you could do more things and cover more bases in a week.

The schedule shows the emphasis for a given week. Not to say that you exclude any single type of workout at any given part of the season, but rather for a given week which sets are the most important ones.

Endurance

We are assuming that the target event will last from one to three minutes. Of all the endurance set types, EN3 is the most specific type of work. Following the logic laid out above regarding stagnation and specificity, EN3 training would come last among the endurance work. However, for this case endurance work is even less specific than SP2 work. So in weeks 22 and 23, the endurance work gets less intense to make room for more SP2 work. As discussed above, if there were more workouts per week, then there may be more time to do both workout types. But with three workouts per week and 90 minutes per workout it is hard to do both EN3 and SP2 work and have enough rest in the workouts. Three or four workouts per week is pretty common for masters swimmers.

Sprint

At the very beginning of the season, there is no sprint training at all. Only endurance type work to expand the athlete’s work capacity. Soon after though, SP3 work starts. The reasoning behind it is that the SP3 work is relatively low stress and raises the eventual performance capacity. By raising the max speed you can maintain, you increase the room to improve. If you can train yourself to hold a given percentage of your max speed for a 100 swim, then raising the max speed will increase your speed in the 100.

There is a fairly long period of SP1 work that leads eventually to four weeks of the very high intensity SP2 type sets right at the end of the season.

Is this the only way to periodize a season?

So is the chart I laid out above the only way to proceed for a masters swimmer? Not at all, the schedule depends on time allowed, the swimmers involved in the program and their strengths and weaknesses and of course it depends on the races being targeted. If we were to go through this exercise for a summer season of open water racing it would look totally different, the endurance work would take the emphasis in the end of the season, not the SP2 work.

Also, if we were to value the mid-seaosn meets more heavily, then we would probably shorten the length of the cycle. Once the meets start we might abbreviate the time in between to a sort of mini season. We would not hold an emphasis for the full 8 weeks but rather would shift emphases every two weeks or so while the meets are going on.

I Hope that by this point the readers are getting a feeling of why things are structured the way they are and can make some sense of what is going on in terms of the season and why the sets are where they are in the season.