Periodization training with building blocks.

Some of us run very contentedly for fun, fresh air, regular exercise and the health benefits it provides. Others run to compete and achieve improvements in performance that result in new personal bests. If you are in that category, periodization is the tool you need to train efficiently, avoid overtraining, and systematically bring Out the best in your efforts.

The Basic Building Plan

Periodization is a training plan that is broken down into blocks where volume, intensity, and rest are manipulated to optimize performance for a targeted event or group of events. A series of work and recovery blocks start with a single workout. These are combined to form the next block, the daily cycle. The daily cycles are combined for a weekly cycle. Weekly schedules add together to form a two to ten week training block. Each block ends with a taper leading up to your race. Training blocks are combined to form your yearly plan.

Periodization can maximize your training if you look at the big picture. What are your goals? Do you want to run a faster 10K? Do you want to complete a marathon for the first time? Design your training blocks to match the needs of your running distance and baseline fitness.

The Importance of Rest & Recovery

Recovery is a training tool and without it you cannot achieve your best. Some runners have trouble incorporating rest into their training. It is a mistake to think that more must be better or that you must train intensely every day. Experts know that such thinking is a formula for failure rather than success. Rest and recovery must be built into each cycle--daily, weekly, training blocks, and the yearly plan. No matter how deeply it runs against your grain to rest, you must.

Recovery can take the form of alternating hard and easy workouts, taking days off within a week, planning tapers before events, and devoting a whole training block to recovery at the end of the year. Physiologically, your body needs time to regenerate its energy stores and rebuild its structures following the competitive season. It allows you to improve at an accelerated rate early in the season due to your body's restructuring and repair.

Psychologically, recovery allows time away from the stress of competition, which whets your appetite for the next season. Recovery also counters boredom, staleness and overtraining, which otherwise would lead to failure.

The Other Variables: Volume / Intensity Mileage /Pace

Your major training blocks are determined by targeting your major events. For the marathoner, this may be two or three events a year. For the 5K or 10K runner it may be many more. By changing the quantity of low volume speedwork and high volume distance work, you can structure your daily workouts and weekly plans to provide the proper mixture of work and rest leading up to each event. Your workouts should vary within a training block, eventually reducing overall volume and increasing the intensity. End the block with a tapering period as your targeted event approaches.

As intensity increases and volume decreases, you will move from greater concentration on aerobic training early in the year to greater concentration on anaerobic or speedwork later. The overall mix of mileage and speed will depend on your racing distance and your baseline fitness. Obviously, the 5K or 10K runner's periodization plan will be more speed-dominated than the marathoner's plan. In either plan, periods of increased intensity must always be followed by a tapering period in order to be able to perform your best.

Applying the Principles

Every runner is unique and every year throws its fair share of curve balls at your training plans-errors in judgment, injuries, illness, weather problems, work, family commitments and travel. Like a construction project, problems and new ideas arise between the design phase and the finished project.

Periodization works the same way. You can't stick rigidly to a plan, nor can you wing it without any blueprint.

The Yearly Plan Begins with a Recovery Period

Look at the coming year. Lay out your competitive schedule. This will allow you to develop a training plan for the year. As a hypothetical 10K runner, let's say that you're planning five major competitions, one in late March, one in early June, another in late August, then one in early October and the last in early November. The most important of these is October, when you want to perform your best. Your recovery from the year you've just finished is your starting point. During the past season you have worn down and rebuilt your body's system through cycles of training, rest and competition, but have never allowed a full recovery. Without this recovery base you can't build and you'll start construction on a weak foundation. With a good rest period your body is rejuvenated and ready to perform at its best again.

Start in mid-November and plan your recovery through early January for mental and physical relaxation. During this time you can try some other activities for cross training, but the emphasis should be on recovery running and maintenance.

The Training Blocks Using the Time to Build

Training blocks are defined by your competitive events (see box below). Both speed and aerobic capacity must be developed. Each block follows a pattern where volume rises in the early part of the block, and then falls off prior to competition. As your mileage drops, intensity increases. Your taper begins where the curve bends down to your race, and it is a critical part of preparation for competition.

The First Training Block

The first weeks of the first training block after recovery should concentrate on a gradual increase in both the volume and intensity of running. Distances increase from three miles to seven miles over the first week and intensity varies from light (70% to 75% of maximum heart rate) to moderately light (75% to 80% of maximum heart rate). Light and heavy days should be balanced with your concentration on distance. The weeks through the middle of the training block should focus on increasing the volume of work building gradually to a peak of 40 to 50 miles per week. While you increase training volume, the nature of the training is also evolving from a high proportion of long runs to a greater concentration on long intervals. The long intervals then progress to shorter intervals of increasingly harder intensity.

During your taper in the final weeks of the cycle, include one or two sessions of short race distance workouts per week. Finally, the last week or so before your race is reserved for recovery. At this time, high quality interval work, repeat 400's, 200's and 100's, should dominate the training, ending with a complete taper a few days prior to race day. By the last week, total volume should have dropped to ten to 20 miles per week with some low-level relaxation runs before the race.

The Second Block

The second training block will build on the improvements you made during your first training block. Looking at the box below you can see that the first cycle was not designed to provide a maximal stimulus for the March race, but rather it was an initial cycle designed to build overall to a peak for the major race in October. Subsequent cycles will feature periods of trade-off between mileage and intensity, with more and more concentration on quality work, long intervals, short intervals, and race-pace training. Given the higher intensity of training as the cycle progresses, there will be a need to increase the recovery period.

The Final Blocks Leading Up to the Big Race

This pattern can be repeated at slightly higher volume and intensity for the two cycles running from the June race to the August race, and from August to your major competition in October. Training gets more intense, and you will need more recovery before the last two blocks. Rest and relaxation for both your psychological and physical needs is important.

The last block can be seen as a mini-cycle incorporating the aspects of the previous cycles into a four-week period. This ends the competitive year bringing you back to your recovery block in preparation for the next season.

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10K TRAINING: SAMPLE ONE-WEEK BLOCK

Plan your week to include these workouts, being sure to hard and easy
days

Type of Workout  Training Goal          Guidelines

Distance         aerobic endurance      10K, medium speed
Distance         aerobic endurance      15 to 20K, easy speed
Speed play       aerobic and anaerobic  10K fartlek
Hills            aerobic and anaerobic  uphill efforts of 300 to 600m
OR
Intervals        anaerobic              400 or 800m repeats
Easy day         recovery               easy pace medium distance
Rest             recovery               day off

Type of Workout  Frequency

Distance         once a week
Distance         once a week
Speed play       once a week
Hills            once a week
OR
Intervals        once a week
Easy day         up to twice a week
Rest             up to twice a week

Joe Signorile, Ph.D., is a runner and is an Associate Professor for the Department of Exercise and Sport Science at the University of Miami in Florida.