Periodisation

[pongo_3931]

Periodisation was a term I came across yesterday and I found the concept interesting. I thought I'd share it and get your thoughts and try to inject something a little interesting and hopefully new to our discussions. :-)

I was told from a source I would consider well informed and credible that all AFL clubs use this theory.

In a nut shell it's about running clubs at low and high troughs throughout the season as people can't perform at 100% all the time. The idea is with monitoring performance like this you can time when your team peaks as well as reduce injury (a possible answer to someones thread about soft tissue injury?) and other stuff too...

Something a little more detailed than my ramble:
http://www.asimba.com/periodization.shtml

So what do you guys think?
Has any one heard of the term?
Do you think it has any value?

Thinking about it this way I wouldn't be surprised if we were about to come out of a trough. Having probably peaked through the pre season training and playing strong against freo round 1 we've slowly downturned stats wise. Up up and away!

[AtomicCounty]

Tapering - and mm has a history of doing it. its why we look like slugs coming into a final series and then explode, eg. port 02, lions 03, swans, 07.

might have geared us up for our next month, bombers/hawks/saints/cats.

[Chase the Ace]

Adelaide and Sydney are masters at it.

[Snag Breac]

I know a little about this, Pongo. It's part of a suite of approach products devised by Swiftian Sports Solutions (formerly featured in the ROCCAdemption buddy thread). Apparently we're just emerging from our Slough of Despond phase. That's certainly true, otherwise I'd be a bit sceptical.

[King Woodie]

Periodisation was a term I came across yesterday and I found the concept interesting. I thought I'd share it and get your thoughts and try to inject something a little interesting and hopefully new to our discussions. :-)

I was told from a source I would consider well informed and credible that all AFL clubs use this theory.

In a nut shell it's about running clubs at low and high troughs throughout the season as people can't perform at 100% all the time. The idea is with monitoring performance like this you can time when your team peaks as well as reduce injury (a possible answer to someones thread about soft tissue injury?) and other stuff too...

Something a little more detailed than my ramble:
http://www.asimba.com/periodization.shtml

So what do you guys think?
Has any one heard of the term?
Do you think it has any value?

Thinking about it this way I wouldn't be surprised if we were about to come out of a trough. Having probably peaked through the pre season training and playing strong against freo round 1 we've slowly downturned stats wise. Up up and away!

All teams do it - in fact almost all sports would do it at the elite / semi-elite level. It is one of the most basic concepts in strength and conditioning qualifications.

You can design programs with multiple peaks, and most teams would have their programs peaking at the same times (ie round 1 and finals time), but there are subtle differences, and hence why you often see good teams do terrible in the NAB cup and poor teams do well (and then fall flat after that), as they focus their peak for different times.

It is not a new concept, and most teams would be more or less the same in this regard.

[The Royal Sampler]

Periodization is an interesting concept and applies to much more than weekly performance. The AFL, for instance, hopes it applies to team performance on a year-to-year basis, and factors such as the draft are what cause an upswing after a trough.

Basically it is used as an approximation for the results that football teams have seen over many years, it's not exact in any way, but it is a modelling tool worth consideration.

[Godfrey Jones]

i think theres some merit in this concept.

We saw what our peak is like against Geelong

We know we cannot keep up that kind of intensity over the course of our season

Sometimes, like against the Swans, Dees or Crows, we get away with winning without playing anywhere near our best. Other times we're not so fortunate to get away with it, like against the Kangas.

Sometimes we really turn it on and come out to play like against the Cats, and followed up against the 100point smashing of the eagles.

Its hard to explain, but this concept may just have some merit,

[King Woodie]

To say "it may just have some merit" almost downplays how widespread it is. All elite and many sub-elite periodise their programs around peaks. IT IS NOTHING NEW.

It is recognised as a key training concept internationally. It would be akin to saying, "Gee, this weight training concept may have some merit." Not only does it have merit, but it has widespread acceptance.

[Godfrey Jones]

To say "it may just have some merit" almost downplays how widespread it is. All elite and many sub-elite periodise their programs around peaks. IT IS NOTHING NEW.

i really am not familiar with this concept, so yes please enlighten me :o

[1eye]

so have geelong been 'periodizing' for 2 years now:rolleyes:

[Godfrey Jones]

yeh nice one :eye roll:

we're no geelong, we're not good enough at the moment to go through games playing at 85%, let alone 60% which they do very well, like in rounds 1-7

[Frederlick]

It is a basic concept applied in almost all spheres of fitness. However it is probably a little misunderstood for the following reasons. The volume and intensity of training is varied over a macrocycle, generally a year of training. A macrocycle is divided into 2 or more mesocycles that are dictated by the major dates of competition. Each mesocycle is divided into periods of preparation, competition and transition. However it isn't that simple,especailly in team sports which are conducted over many months of competition, from the web:

Periodization is a method of alternating training loads to produce peak performance for a specific competitive event. It’s a well-established scheme adopted from Russia-it was one of the ‘secrets’ that helped them dominate Olympic sport for so long. Recently, however, Dr. Yuri Verkhoshansky, a leading architect of the Russian sports training philosophy, wrote an article titled, “The End of Periodization in High Performance Sport,” and readers wondered why a leading advocate of periodization would be saying such things.

Western coaches have been fixated for years on only one periodization (PD) model, that of Dr. Leonid Matveyev. In this model, the volume of general preparation decreases as intensity and emphasis on technical training for specific preparations increase, producing peak performance during a competition phase (see Fig. 1). The model becomes too limited, however, when rigidly applied by coaches unfamiliar with Matveyev’s work. Such a simplified version of the model leads to an over-reliance on apparently objective measures of loading, such as numerical calculations, and does not consider the athlete’s subjective perception of the intensity and overall effects of the loading.

This is a contributing factor to Adelaides failure in some years when it was thought they were shoe ins to go deep into the finals. It is arguable that Adelaide have ever been the masters of periodisation, despite Neil Craigs sports medicine background. Their finals performance does not bear this out. I have seen it discussed on here that Tom Hafey's linear periodisation approach cost us the 77 GF because he smashed them on the track in the week leading up to the GF.

Anyway it is not fitness that should be addressed this time of year, but skills and technique that should be reaching their peak around finals time. Fitness is what is established in pre season and maintained throughout the year. Skills and technique cannot be brought to their peak without a good fitness base and are much higher up the performance pyramid than fitness, that is, they are harder to acquire and maintain. So really this is a very complex animal for club staff to manage, and is done on an individual and team basis.

[AtomicCounty]

its the reason why this week all the middle of the road teams lost in "upsets". i know the saints tripled their training set over the last month and i'm pretty sure we have done the same. good teams spread the load, where we rely heavily on penders, cloke and shaw. so if they're down so are we.

theres allways good money to be made on the punt this time of year.

[Frederlick]

theres allways good money to be made on the punt this time of year. :D:thumbsu: heart breaker for us non punters though.

[Lockyer24]

I hope so. We were pretty much this shit late last year too, then turned out some fine performances in the Finals.