Planning a Training Year (Periodisation)

Phases of Competition (pre-season, in-season and off-season phases)

Pre-season
- Preparation phase before the season.
- Rudimentary training sessions are established.
- Often broken down into general and specific mesocycles.
- Focus is given on fitness indicators (cardiovascular endurance, muscle strength etc.).
In-season
- Can be prolonged or short depending on the sport.
- For sports that have match days within short intervals, training volume is reduced.
- The training sessions of this phase are more skills and strategy oriented.
Off-season
- Training phase post season ending.
- Involves relaxation and recovery.
- For a period of time, players are given a break from training or asked to train in decreased volume and intensity.
- Once the recovery phase is complete, pre-season training sets are initiated again.

Subphases

Macro
- Includes longer training cycles that run through the whole year.
- However, the duration of the cycle is also sport dependent.
- For example, a 4 year macrocycle is required for an athlete training to compete in the Olympics, while a tennis or a football player has a macrophase extending for a single year.
Micro
- Training programs are small, often run for a week only.
- Often focused on smaller training sessions that add up to a macrocycle, working as building blocks.
- Applicable for sporting events that run through the week.

Peaking

The time when an athlete is performing at their best.
An athlete reaches their peak in combination with great physical fitness, understanding and proper execution of skills along with development of strategic thinking capabilities.
Peaking is not a permanent trait of athletes. However, during the short lived period an athlete is found to be:
- Recovering quickly
- Showing optimum fitness performances
- Strategically aware
- Focused and confident
- Making quick and correct decisions

Tapering

Reduction in training volume to allow peaking before the competition.
Allows recovery time for the athlete to heal and repair minor injuries and retain full fitness.
However, training sets shouldn’t be decreased drastically since it could affect cardiovascular endurance.

Sport-specific Subphases

Combination of meso and microcycles specific to a sport that build up the bigger training goals.
Throughout the training period, important determinants such fitness, skills and other variables are focused on.
For example, triathletes need to be focused more on cardiovascular endurance than basketball players.