First part: Ancient roots of periodisation in sport
By the early 20th century, athletes in Europe were already using slightly more elaborate training planning principles, the best example being the Finnish runners of 1910-20. Finnish long-distance runner Paavo Nurmi (nicknamed the "Flying Finn") followed Galen's annual planning structure, but heavily emphasised the preparation phase, with lots of long-distance training in the aerobic ranges, what we now call "base building".
A great contribution to the field of sports training planning was also made by German scientists and their very methodical preparation programme for the Olympic Games in 1936. They implemented a four-year preparation plan consisting of annual training cycles. Thanks to this approach, German athletes achieved great success at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
Some glimpses of planning principles were applied by many famous athletes and coaches of the time. Arthur Lydiard or Emil Zatopek can be mentioned. Most of them used preparation periods.
American coach Dean Cromwell, considered one of the best athletic coaches in history, expressed a simple piece of advice for sprinters. Training should begin six months before the planned competition to lay a solid physical foundation. During this period little attention should be paid to speed training. Sports such as tennis, handball, badminton or volleyball were recommended as were marches, but these had to be practised in no less than two miles a day. Slow running and then slowly added sprints were added to the programme two to three times a week to ensure that the athlete had "legs ready to work on speed in the spring". To the delight of many sprinters, long-distance training was to be avoided because it reduces 'springiness', a key feature of a sprinter's form. So that's why "sprinters should never run more than two laps at a time".
First works on periodisation in the USSR
The subsequent development of periodisation is mainly linked to the Soviet-funded sports development programme. After the end of World War II and the world's entry into the Cold War era, sport was treated in the USSR as a means of demonstrating the superiority of the socialist system. Fueled by the Cold War, the rivalry between the bloc of Western countries and the bloc of the USSR led to a significant expansion of already existing theories. Indeed, sport became a field for demonstrating superiority on the same level as the then very heavily funded space conquest programme. In both the Soviet Union and the USA a very coordinated and large-scale effort was launched to promote the science of sport. A close alliance of scientists and coaches was promoted to advance the sport and improve the performance of athletes.
In the mid-1960s, two articles written by Soviet professor Nikolai Ozolin were translated and reprinted in the American journal Track Technique. He analysed the number of training hours required for success, the staggered training load and the use of a three-day training micro-cycle.
On the first day of the micro-cycle the training was intense but short in duration. The intensity of the second day was described as optimal but with an unknown higher training load. The last day was the lowest intensity but longer in duration. There was no mention of rest days.
The second article, 'Fundamentals of Training Planning', written by Viktor Popov, is the first to be devoted exclusively to comprehensive training planning. This was the moment when training theory itself and training planning began to be recognised (at least in the Soviet Union) as independent disciplines. Popov wrote that "the training of athletes is a whole-forming process for improving the ease of physical movement, developing the functional capabilities of the body and increasing willpower. The cooperation and planning of many team members, including the coach, athlete, doctor and scientist, is necessary to achieve this goal. Popov opined in his article that the initial stage of training consisted of steadily increasing both intensity and volume of training. However, the increase in volume always preceded the increase in intensity. Popov explained that the structure of the training programme should be divided into annual, monthly and weekly cycles. Annually, a plan consisting of two cycles was recommended as it allowed for two peaks in an athlete's performance during the indoor season followed by the open stadium season. In his opinion, before creating an accurate annual plan, the following points should first be considered:
- Competition schedule for the upcoming season.
- A detailed analysis of the results of the previous season.
- Goals and objectives for the upcoming season.
The monthly training cycle included a smaller two- or three-week period when the training load was gradually increased. In the last week the load was reduced by 30-50% to allow the athlete to recover and become ready for the next training cycle.
At the same time Jess Jarver, editor of the Australian magazine Mordern Athlete and Coach wrote an article entitled "How to Plan Training for Athletics" ("How to Plan Training for Track and Field"). He suggested dividing the year into two main phases: preparation and competition. He also mentioned a foundation phase, but did not elaborate. During the foundation phase the training load and intensity increased, general training was slowly replaced by specific exercises, shaping the target abilities of the athlete. Similarly, slow long runs were replaced by more intensive but shorter workouts.
Jarver's approach was not as scientific. While Popov pointed out the need for the whole staff to work together, including not only the coach and player, but also the doctor and the scientist, Jarver, focused only on the cooperation between coach and player.
It was the approach of Popov and his followers that had a greater influence on the development of periodisation in subsequent years, including in the United States.
In 1972, physiologist Christian W. Zauner and Edwin Reese, assistant swimming coaches at Florida State University, wrote an article about 'tapering'. In it, the authors claimed that in order to reach peak performance, training volume had to be reduced heavily three weeks before competition. Additionally, they manipulated the diet of their athletes, namely the first two weeks they ate high-fat and low-carbohydrate meals, only to revert to a high-carbohydrate diet in the last week of training before the competition. The last three days before the competition was complete rest, where the athletes had the choice to either stop training altogether or limit themselves to a warm-up only.
Lev Pavlovich Matveyev
Further advances in periodisation theory also occurred in the Soviet Union. In 1965, Lev Matveyev published his book “Fundamentals of Sports Training”. Almost immediately it was translated and published in most of the countries of the USSR bloc, and soon afterwards also in many Western countries.
To correctly formulate the principles of training, Matveyev analysed the sports results and profiles of several thousand elite athletes in competitions that could be easily compared, such as athletics, swimming and weightlifting. From the data he collected, he drew conclusions and developed a general theory of training, the aim of which was not only to achieve continuous progress for athletes, but also to enable them to perform at their best at the right time. He conducted his research very comprehensively. He tried to analyse the data in such a way as to find out the effect of training on as many systems of the human body as possible. "Fundamentals of Sports Training" by Matveyev also addressed the philosophical, methodological, sociological and psychological aspects of sport. It also covered history, ethics, as well as biological issues (anthropometry, morphology, biophysics, biochemistry and physiology), sports medicine and dealt with metrology. It was therefore a body of work that was not limited to just one point of view.
However, Matveyev placed the greatest emphasis in his training theory on the principles of periodisation. These referred to dividing an athlete's training programme into specific periods, or cycles.
The term cycle is very characteristic in Soviet planning theory. Cycles were used in the USSR in industrial production and to describe the life span of products. Matveyev used the science of planning applied to state and industrial management, and applied it to the process of human sports training. Of course, everything was built on a solid foundation of analysis of athletes of many sports.
According to Matveyev, in order to ensure the athlete's continuous improvement in physical performance, it was important to correctly calculate the optimal training load and to correctly determine the parameters of regeneration. Training load was understood as the additional stress induced on the human organism by performing sports. Rest, on the other hand, was necessary to ensure that the athlete could regain the ability to perform the required training volume and intensity again.
Directly related to this idea were the concepts of volume and intensity of training. Volume was understood as the quantitative sum of work done during workouts. Intensity, on the other hand, was the level of difficulty of the workouts. Volume and intensity could be continuously increased up to a certain level, beyond which the ratio had to be reversed: a further increase in intensity was conditional on a decrease in volume.
Macrocycles
The longest training cycle was called a macro-cycle and consisted of half a year or one year of training. Semi-annual plans divided the year into two macro-cycles and were used in sports such as athletics, where it was often necessary to achieve two peaks of performance during the year, first in an indoor event and then in an outdoor stadium.
Each macro-cycle consisted of three main phases:
- preparation,
- competition including the main event, and
- a transitional phase which combined the competition period of one macro-cycle with the preparation period of the next.
The preparatory phase lasted three to four months in a six-month plan and five to seven months in an annual plan. It was divided into two main stages - general preparation and special preparation.
The general preparation phase consisted of a general increase in the biomotor abilities of athletes (strength, speed, flexibility, endurance) and additional development of motor skills. It was characterised by a gradual increase in volume and intensity.
The special stage of the preparatory phase, shorter than the general preparation phase, was aimed at developing specialised training aimed at mastering selected technical and tactical habits and skills in the form in which they would be used in the upcoming competitions.
The next phase was the competition phase, which lasted one and a half to two months in the six-month plan and four to five months in the annual plan. It consisted of specific training sessions and competitions around which the entire training process was planned.
The last phase of the macro-cycle, the transition phase, included three to six weeks of active recovery. The emphasis in this phase was on physical and emotional relaxation, including recreational activities that would allow the athlete to return 'fresh' to training for the next macro-cycle. The inclusion of varied activities in this phase rather than complete rest provided continuity between the competitive phase and the subsequent preparatory phase.
Mesocycles
Each macrocycle consisted of smaller cycles called mesocycles. Depending on which phase of the macro-cycle they occurred in, mesocycles could be of different types. The most frequent were mesocycles of basic preparation and had a general preparatory or special preparatory character. There were also other types of mesocycles, such as pre-priming or regeneration.
Each mesocycle lasted several weeks and included various types of microcycles.
Microcycles
Matveyev's shortest training phase was the microcycle. It usually included one week of training. In each microcycle, training was planned in detail for each day of the week. Several microcycles, usually three to six, made up one mesocycle.
Each microcycle usually consisted of two phases. The first was the stimulation phase, otherwise known as the accumulation phase. It involved a specific training load and resulted in the fatigue of the athlete. The second phase was the recovery phase, which consisted of a recovery session or complete rest. For example, a weekly microcycle could consist of two cumulative phases (consisting of two to three training sessions) separated by recovery sessions and end with an active rest day.
During the year, depending on the phase of the macrocycle, Matveyev distinguished the following types of microcycles:
- general preparation microcycles,
- special preparation microcycles (depending on the subject of training),
- microcycles of the competition phase (designed to achieve the highest results during the most important competitions).
Other types of microcycles included:
- recovery microcycles focusing on rest after a period of harder training,
- shock microcycles, characterised by higher training volume and intensity,
- pre-competition microcycles, which precede the competition phase microcycles and aim to prepare the athlete for competition.
In summary, Matveyev's general theory of sport, and especially his concept of periodisation, provided the first comprehensive overview of the complete sports training process that could be applied to all sports. It incorporated psychological, intellectual, sport technique and tactical training issues into its theories, including an approach to physical attributes such as speed, strength, endurance, flexibility or coordination.
Because this work contained ideas originating in the USSR, it not so quickly found fertile ground in the United States. For many years, Americans learned periodisation from works published by their own authors. However, they were not as comprehensive. While many other coaches, especially in the United States, developed detailed training programmes for only selected sports, Matveyev was able to offer a single theory for each sport and, based on his theory, a good plan for building training for four years of Olympic preparation could be developed.
Tudor Bompa
Even before Matveyev's publication, Romanian coach Tudor Bompa (also originating from the Eastern Bloc), created and applied a structured annual plan. Starting in 1961, he applied it to Romanian Olympic javelin champion Mihaela Penes. During this time Bompa created the concepts of periodisation of biomotor abilities, in particular periodisation of strength and power. This then innovative training approach turned a then unknown athlete (Mihaela Penes) into an Olympic champion in just 5 years.
Tudor Bompa refined his concepts over the following years and they became one of the most important training methodologies, a tool used to maximise performance in many sports.
Bompa developed several aspects of the periodisation of biomotor abilities: the periodisation of strength, power, endurance and agility. Originally, Matveyev's structured training referred only to an annual plan with only one phase of competition, the monocycle. Despite its versatility, however, this did not meet the needs of all sports. Therefore, with the development of the theory of periodisation in sport, Tudor Bompa's training plans were adapted to the needs of athletes who participated in more than one major competition during the year. There were also variants of these for athletes who participate in competitions almost all year round (e.g. tennis or football).
Names that should also be mentioned when discussing the history of periodization are Yuri Verkoszanski, László Nádori, V. Platonov, Michael H. Stone, Steven J. Fleck or Harold O'Bryant. All of them have published important works on periodisation and sports training planning.