Indoor to Outdoor Season

At this time of the year athletes and coaches if not wrestling with the transition to the outdoor season after the outdoor one will be thinking positively about what training they need to do and what they need to place to one side for the moment.

I've written an article for the UK athletics magazine Athletics Weekly, which will appear in the March 22nd issue. So I can't say too much here, but suffice to say that what training you will do now and between the start of the summer season and through the summer season will reflect your or your coach's approach to periodisation.

When I was a student of physical education many years ago we learned about microcycles, mesocycles and macrocycles. These are training phases of different durations (small, to larger, to larger respectively). These phases are then placed within a progressive training plan - the whole theory of training planning is known as periodisation. The approach I learnt over 20 years ago was what's now called "traditional periodisation". It was originated largely in the former eastern Bloc countries, Russia, East Germany and Romania, for example. Nowadays as my article will explain there are perhaps better training planning models that can be used - variations of what's known as "block" periodisation. 

I use a method known variously as multi-targeted block periodisation/undulating periodisation. (I cover this in the article and also in a video on training planning recently uploaded to my youtube channel. (You'll also find this below).

It's not just long jump training that needs to be periodised for example
Strength and plyometric training, for example, also needs to be "cycled" to fit the rest of the aims of the athlete's training and thus a training plan, is a plan with many sub plans contained within it - all of which should dovetail together to bring about peak performance.

If I'm brutally honest, my plan is as much committed to memory as it is to a spread sheet. I progress through blocks of training all of which don't deviate too much from the key aims of training a long or triple jumper i.e. to develop improved technical ability, speed and power. My plyometrics and weight training are for the majority of the athletes I coach part and parcel of the blocks i.e. they are not separated.

I'll say more on this in another post in future (and more on my overall approach to periodisation). The development of strength that will truly benefit performance is a subject in its own right - again I have made a couple of videos on this.

The books you'll see to the right have been very useful to me over the years. I interviewed Tudor Bompa, author of Periodisation of Strength and have used many of his ides in my coaching practise. Track & Field - the East German Textbook of Athletics is also a useful but older training reference. It includes useful technical models of the events and also some good conditioning drills (note this book is from the Soviet era and should be read in the light of this, but as I say, much of what's in it stands the test of time). And to these should be added the work of Dr Anatoliy Bondarchuk. The former Soviet hammer great and elite coach has made many studies of great relevance to track & field and published a number of books on the subject including Transfer of Training in Sports.

​Good luck with your transition training!