What is Periodisation?
To put it in simple terms, periodisation is training to a plan. To have a plan in place it takes you from where you are currently to achieving your training goals, to having a sequence of phases that will build you up towards reaching your goals both short as well as long term.
Periodisation all comes back to what’s called the SAID principle. (Specific Adaptations to an Imposed Demand) This means everything that’s done to our body in and out of the gym is imposing a certain demand on the body. As a result, that’s going to elicit specific adaptations.
A common analogy to use is marathon runner’s vs sprinters. Both are performing a biomechanical movement of running that looks the same but are two very different intensities and imposed demands. As a result, they will both have very different specific adaptations on the body.
A marathon runner’s imposed demand is slow and long duration aerobic work, the specific adaptations that they may exert on their body is an increase of type 1 fibres, which are your endurance muscle fibres and will also have a lot more aerobic based fitness benefits for the heart and cardiovascular system.
Sprinters have very high intensities, which means they are more inclined to their imposed demands that are going to have very different specific adaptations on their physique in terms of muscular development & cardiovascular benefits.
These are the just some of the concepts you want to be considering with your own programming, what are the specific adaptations that you care about? Then what imposed demands should you be exerting on your body to elicit those adaptations.
One thing we need to understand is what’s called general adaptation syndrome. The general adaptation syndrome is a framework that was developed by endocrinologist Hans Selye. A framework to help understand what happens to the body when it is exposed to long term stress.
This framework is useful to understand what happens to our body when exposed to a training program long term. (See diagram above) Starting off in this blue zone and following the yellow line along to see what happens in different stages in any training cycle, whether it be weight lifting, bodybuilding, marathon running etc. your body is going to follow in a set sequence of events as it adapts to and responds to the given training program.
Starting in the blue zone the yellow flat line dictates our homeostasis, this is your body in balance where it wants to be maintaining its current set point. As we reach the alarm phase this is the point where you would be exposing your body to a new stimulus such as starting a new training program. In that initial phase, the red phase or alarm phase, what will happen is a diminishing response to your overall adaptability because that new intervention has now shocked your body and it will take time for your body to start gathering resources to start responding to the new training stimulus.
How long it takes for your body to start responding to this disruption, to your set point of balance could be anywhere from a day to a week or even a couple of weeks. It really depends on your overall state of readiness, lifestyle and genetic factors. A more advanced athlete will have a much faster turn around time, where the introduction of a new training stimulus wont really cause a big disruption to their homeostasis, or if it does they will be able to bounce back and respond to it very quickly.
After you get into this inevitable phase of this dipping in your adaptability, this is when your body starts to respond and react into the green zone, or what is called the resistance phase where your body starts adapting to the training stimulus. This could be when you start improving things like mitochondria functions or cardiovascular fitness & health, increase muscle mass etc. This cycle is when your body starts creating these specific adaptations and starts responding.
Eventually you are going to reach a point of diminishing return, this is where the dangers are with following the exact same training program over and over again long term. Fact is you can’t linearly progress forever more, otherwise everyone would be fast, strong, muscular etc. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way and we are going to reach a point of diminishing returns.
Program design and periodisation is all about understanding when you are going to be pushing towards this red zone or exhaustion point and how to pull back and change things accordingly. If you fail to respond properly before you reach this point of exhaustion, the potential is that your body will not only flatline but start to go backwards and even fall below your initial starting point of homeostasis and you will find yourself getting weaker or injured, despite going through a full training cycle. That’s when this gets extremely important because you get these diminishing returns that take you down below your initial starting point.
The ideal scenario would be to introduce the imposed demand, have your body create the specific adaptations and respond to it and then reach a maintenance point or consolidation cycle where you look at maintaining the gains that you made in the previous cycle. Then maintain them for a set period of time which will then create a new homeostasis point that would be higher than what you started out at. Meaning more muscle, more strength, improved cardiovascular fitness etc. From there it becomes a simple case of rinse and repeat as needed, you would enlist another cycle of specific adaptations by imposing a new demand that dips your recovery down, then your body responds. That is how you keep training long term and get results long term.
References
- Ganbaru Method, Eugene Teo, Published March 2020, Accessed September 28th Periodisation & Program Design – Ganbaru Method
- Habits for wellbeing, Albrecht K. 1979. Stress and the Manager. New York, USA: Touchstone, Accessed September 28th Books. The General Adaptation Syndrome by Hans Selye (habitsforwellbeing.com)
