How We Periodization Training Year Round

Audio Transcript

Danny: How are we doing today? Runners Connect fans, it’s coach Danny here.

Welcome to the Runners Connect, Run to the Top Extra Kick Podcast. Today’s question comes from Mark.

Mark: Good morning coaches. I’m really digging the new podcast, and I’ve really enjoyed working on the training schedules, over the last seven months.

My question is, in the training schedules, where does the annual periodization effect come in? Which is kind of looking at it from a goal-raised perspective, at least in my case. Please enlighten me. Thank you very much.

Danny: The question is in reference to annual periodization, more specifically, how we plan out a training cycle from race to race or from point A to Point B.

The first step is to break down that time capsule into four different phases: the transition phase, the foundation phase or the base phase, a specific phase, and then your peak phase or your taper.

Let’s go back to the top. When you’re coming off a race, say a full target race, you’ll enter your transition phase. The transition phase is where you allow your body to overcompensate or recover, refresh from, not only the race you just completed, but the weeks upon weeks, and the months of training that you have done prior to that race.

What the transition phase is, is two to four weeks roughly of very unstructured training. It’s all about recovery; rejuvenation of the body and the mind.

It’s about refreshing both those systems to tackle another training cycle. Why is it in there? Just to reiterate, it’s to refresh; to allow the body to heal up.

You don’t want to go back into another training phase, still dealing with little niggles or aches and pains that have cropped up in the past training cycle, and they have been kind of lingering around.

This is the opportunity to take care of those issues. It’s an opportunity to explore other facets of fitness.

It’s the time to do boot camps or cycling or any form of cross training. You’re not in a structure or any training program, you’re just recovering from the past training cycle.

Again, this is right after, for example, a goal race, two to four weeks later, and it depends on the person.

A general guideline I like to go by is, one week of full recovery, and this is taken coming off a marathon, for example.

The first week is full recovery, no running at all. Minimal cross training, and plenty of rest.

For the second week, I’ll typically leave it up to the runner. If they feel like they want to get back out there and run a little bit, I let them include a couple of runs a week, no more than 20 or 30 minutes in very light set active recovery.

It’s the same as an easy day. You’re letting your body recover by running very light and very, very easy.

Of course, with any kind of cross training, they want to swim, or do biking. This is the time to get out and enjoy those kind of activities.

So, how does this work?

One of the outcomes of a transitional phase is to be refreshed. And I’m speaking more so about being mentally refreshed.

I want you to be ready to tackle in the training phase. I want you to be chomping at the bit, excited to get back into structured training, excited for those eight mile temples and those two to three hour long runs.

If I feel, on both ends, physically that you’re not ready to get back into it because you’re Achilles are still sore or your hips are still bothering you, those are the kind of things that will throw up a red flag. I’ll have to , “Hey, let’s take up more down weeks, just to let things heal up.”

The last thing you want to do is get back into a training phase, rush back into it only for you to take some serious downtime three or four weeks later, because you didn’t allow an injury to heal.

The same goes with mental health too. I want your mindset to be refreshed. I want you to be looking forward and excited to train.

And it varies from individual to individual.

For some people, that’s three days after the marathon, while for others, it’s upwards of three, sometimes four weeks, and they’re ready to get back up into a full structured training.

After the transitional phase, is the base phase or foundational phase.

This is where you start building up your volume. You’re going to do a lot, and complete a lot of workouts in training that will prepare you for the next phase, a specific phase.

These are like the building blocks and you’re kind of laying a foundation. The old saying says, the larger the foundation or the base of a home, the higher the ceilings.

The more rooms you can put in the house, the bigger the house, so, think of it that way.

The better that this phase goes, the better that you can come in behind it, and fill it with a lot of specific work. The specific work simulates most of the race demands that you’ll experience.

Back to the foundational phase. What is it? It could be a pin on the time capsule we had. It could be anywhere from four weeks up to 12, maybe even a little bit longer.

We try to keep it at 12 weeks or less, just to keep from plateauing.

This is a time where you’re working on becoming a well-rounded runner, in my opinion. What a lot of people get in the habit of, is going from marathon to marathon: fall marathon, spring marathon, etc.

They recover after a fall marathon and then jump right back into more specific training program for the marathon. They neglect a lot of the shorter race distances, the speeds that coincide with those race distances, you know, 5k, 10k, even half marathon.

They’re really training at one end of the spectrum, but to become a better marathoner, for example, you want to be sure you’re training at all spectrums, all across the spectrum of paces and energy systems. That’s what the foundational phase is.

If you’re training for a spring marathon, you might be doing a lot of the intervals on the track during this phase. And those intervals will slowly build in temple runs, and then slowly build into longer temple runs, somewhat of a goal pace that you want for that marathon.

But it helps you work on that speed that you’ve maybe neglected in the fall, in the previous training cycle, or vice versa. It helps if you’re a 5k, 10k, as you may be doing a lot more longer slower stuff, a lot more temple stuff.

Some of the stuff that will have been left out in the previous specific phase. Why is this? I’ve pretty much touched on it.

It’s to become a better well-rounded runner. Just like being an athlete, being a great athlete will make you a lot better at a specific sport.

Same with strength training. So make strength training a part of your routine early on in this foundational phases, base phase, not necessarily to make you stronger in a month, but more so you’re stronger and you’re better able to handle the workouts, two to three months down the line when you’re doing your most demanding workouts and you need that recovery.

Strength training comes twofold? It makes you a stronger runner, of course, and it helps keep you balanced so, you don’t have any muscle imbalances or anything like that.

But strength training also helps you become more durable so, you’re not breaking down as much, during that 20 mile long run or that set of 12 by 400m intervals on the track.

It doesn’t take you as long to bounce back from those.

That’s another aspect of strength training that a lot of people don’t realize. Yes, you’ll be stronger but it’s also going to keep you from breaking down as much; you’ll going to be more durable.

The other advantage that strength training gives you is that it helps you down the road in those bigger workouts.

Because marathon training, for instance, is all about nailing those workouts as they come along, back to back to back, week after week.

Let’s move on from the foundational phase and enter the specific phase. This is where you do a lot of your specific workouts that simulate the demands of your race.

And we’ll continue with the marathon example. This phase could last upwards of 12 weeks or as little as six weeks. Again, it depends on the individual and how they adapt to the phases before this.

How have they adapted to the foundational phase, the base phase, and what are their goals? How much time do we have to work on these things? These are all factors to be considered.

The specific phase is important because these are the workouts where the focus is defining a goal pace, taking that goal pace, and applying workouts in a structured and progressive manner. It helps to extend your ability to run at that pace comfortably, for longer distances of time.

So, that’s the whole purpose of those last eight, six, 12 weeks, depending on [inaudible 00:10:35] that you’re in a specific phase.

Obviously, a specific phase is the third of the four phases. It’s right before your taper. So, it can start anywhere from as far as three months or as soon as six weeks out from your race. How we incorporate this and how we transition from foundational phases, specific phase and into the peak phases is kind of an art form.

It’s not, “Okay, this week you end on the foundational phase, and on Monday you’ll start with the specific phase.” They all kind of blend together. So, you shouldn’t really see any start and stop of each phase. They all kind of blend together.

So, moving on from the specific phase, you want to feel refreshed. You want to feel good and you want to feel fit. As they say, hay is in the barn. So, once you enter that taper phase, or as I call the peak phase, you’re ready to roll.

You’re not necessarily going in the peak phase. It isn’t going to be gaining fitness; you’re going to be taking away fatigue and more of that last two, three percent of fitness that you’ve already had is going to kind of shine through.

You’re going to let your muscles, tendons and ligaments get that bounce back in them; get back the spark where you need that sharpness.

So, the peak phase can last anywhere from seven to ten days, to as long as three weeks. Again, it’s very dependent on the individual you’re working with.

This is the time where communication between the athlete and the coach is key.

I feel like a coach will bring in a set of guidelines, a set of boundaries to taper, that the athlete needs to stay within, to ensure that they can perform optimally on race day.

Other than that, a lot of the input should come from the athlete. The athlete has a good idea of what kind of workouts work for them, and what kind of workouts they come away from feeling confident and feeling like they’ve nailed.

If you struggle with intervals on a track, that is something a coach would want to know, so you don’t see intervals on a track those last two or three weeks.

If you’re really strong in temples and you’ve put together some really strong temples to your training cycle, a coach will see that and maybe throw in some kind of temple work for those couple of weeks.

It’s all about inserting workouts those last couple of weeks, just enough stimulus to maintain and top off all the system, so to speak.

But mentally, it helps to make you more confident. It’s kind of a snowball effect up until race day.

The last thing we want is for you to be on the starting line of your spring marathon with five months of training behind you, and you’re questioning if you tapered right.

On the race day, we want you be focused on the race, and not [?] with your taper. Again, a taper can last you in training anywhere between a week and three weeks.

It’s kind of a mystery on how it works. Like I said, this is the one of the phases that’s most individual to the athlete.

It takes a lot of trial and error, and like I said, a lot of communication between coach and athlete, to get it right. You put in four, five, six months of training to peak within a three, four, five days window.

So, we’re trying to match that up and that’s where communication becomes so crucial.

The goal of a taper is to back off. You want to back off your volume just a little bit, but not so much to where you’re going to be feeling flat on race day.

Again, that’s unique to each individual. However, you want to keep the intensity up.

You’re still going to do some kind of work out: taper temple, some kind of short interval, some strides, just to keep sharp and to keep the intensity up. You do this so that you’re not feeling flat on race day.

That’s a good question and thank you so much for asking, Mark.

Please come back and ask another question in the future. For those of you listening that want to have your question answered by one of the Runners Connect coaches, head over to runnersconnect.net/daily, and click the record button to send your question over.

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