Preparing for the Indoor Season

We're heading into the Christmas and New Year holiday period and when many are looking to unwind and put their feet up over the festive season, athletes are looking to put their feet down harder on the accelerator and pick-up their training in prep for the indoor season, which in the UK starts Jan time.

My training, as regular readers of this blog will know, trends to reflect an undulating model, rather than a linear (traditional) model. I mix up all the elements of the training mix into a bit a potpourri of workouts - so there's always speed (acceleration, top end and run-up), technical work (speed and pit work), heavy weights, low rep work) and plyos. This means that we never stray too far from what will specifically improve an athlete. We don't really go through obviously distinct phases, the transitions are more subtle and played around with to get the desired results. The desired results being; building, speed and power and technical ability concurrently. If you use traditional periodisation you run the risk of playing catch-up, particularly when it comes to speed and power transference into actual event performance - important at this time of the season. Do note that there are other coaches who like 'tradition', who like to have distinct progressive training phases and who like linearness. It's certainly easier to write out these types of training plans than be more specifically ad-hoc. Traditional periodisation can and does get results (I say this to not be married off into the corner at the next coaches get together by the traditionalists). I go with what I've found works and produces results for the jumpers and sprinters I train.

I'll go into detail about the pros and cons of differnt periodisation approaches another day. In the meantime checkout this video on my youtube channel that showcases some of the potpourri of training we are doing as the indoor season approaches.