Periodization Made Simple Part II: Periodizing Intensity

In Part I of this series I discussed one of the major types of periodization, periodizing by physical attribute.  Basically, this means rotating your training to focus on one major physical quality at a time - building muscle, getting stronger, getting faster, or gaining endurance.  You do this by designing workouts that focus on one of those qualities, and either rotating the workouts one after the other or focus on just one type of workout for a block of time - from 3-8 weeks - then switching to another "type."

Periodizing Intensity:  This is a very different idea than periodizing attributes (though they can work together).  To periodize intensity means to vary how hard you're working at whatever you're doing.  Remember, any type of workout - strength, speed, hypertrophy, or energy system - can be very hard, or very taxing, on your body, or comparatively less taxing.  People just can't charge full speed ahead week in and week out forever without crashing and burning.  To prevent this we build planned de-loads or rests into our training.

There are a few different ways to handle this, and I'll go over the most common.


When do we periodize intensity? 

This is a great question.  There are roughly two ways to handle this.  The first is to do planned deloading periods.  That means that you, or your coach, or whoever, figures out ahead of time that you're going to go full blast for, say, 8 weeks, then do a 1 week deload.  (There's nothing special about 8 weeks, it's just an example number - fill in your own block of  time).  This is especially handy when you're working towards a competition or a meet.  I've written before (read this and this) that you should prepare for a promotion or a competition by resting in the days immediately preceding the "event."

The downside to this style is that if you're just training - if you're not heading towards any specific goal date, like a contest, but just trying to generally improve - you still need rest occasionally but it's really hard to say with confidence, "oh, I'll work this hard, and I'll definitely need a rest after 6 weeks - not 5 or 7, but definitely 6."  If you try that, and you don't have a team of physiologists planning things out for you, you run a real risk of going too long without a break or getting rest you don't need.

So what's the alternative?  Many people advocate resting or de-loading when you physically need it.  That sounds kind of obvious - rest when you need to rest!  But how do you know when you need to rest (as opposed to just being lazy)?

If you've been training for a long time you might be a very good judge of your body's status - you might be able to accurately "feel" whether you're ready for a hard training session or need to back off.  That's great!  But if you want a more scientific measurement, or if you don't have that level of physical awareness yet, you can go with a couple of other choices.

One common method is to measure your waking heart rate.  Get a heart rate monitor or use the finger + stopwatch method and measure your heart rate when you first wake up - ideally before you get out of bed.  After a few days you should get a pretty good idea of what's normal for you.  If one day you're feeling tired and your waking heart rate is higher than normal, that's the day to rest.

A better (probably) method is to measure heart rate variability.  If you're worn out your heart rate variability (how much it goes up and down in response to normal getting up and moving around type of activity) will decrease, and that's the time to rest and recover (high heart rate variability = good).  I know of no easy way to measure this without some kind of sophisticated equipment - please post to comments if you do!

If you're kind of in the middle, body-awareness wise, and aren't sure if you're being lazy or genuinely need rest, I like to go to the gym and do the warmup before re-evaluating.  If I warm up and still feel like crap I'll de-load.  If I'm just not in the mood and don't really need the rest I'll usually find that I'm good to go once I finish my warmup.


How do we periodize intensity?  So you've decided that it's time for a de-load.  There are roughly two ways to back off on intensity.  The first, and probably simplest, is to rest.  And by rest I just mean skip workouts or reduce their frequency - take a few days or a week off.

There are two downsides to resting this way.  The first is that you lose momentum.  I don't know about you, but I find it easier to get to the gym or dojo if I'm going regularly - once I take some time off I find it hard to get back.  If that doesn't apply to you, that's great, you can judge that for yourself.  The second downside is that you might recover faster doing something than doing nothing.  That means you're probably better off with what they call active recovery.

Active recovery means some version of doing relatively easy workouts.  You can do the same workout you're resting from, and back off on the weight used (back off a lot, not just 5-10 lbs) but do the same style of workout.  If you were working on speed, do some relaxed speed work - don't go all-out.  Run hard, but don't sprint, and don't do a lot of volume.  If you were working on strength, drop the weight and just "go through the motions."  It can be hard to restrain yourself, especially if you're feeling okay and are doing a planned de-load before a competition, but do it anyway!

The trick with active recovery is to move enough to get blood pumping through the muscles - delivering nutrients and clearing away waste products - without doing any additional damage.  In other words, don't make new inroads into your recovery system!  That means no brand new exercises, lots of full range of motion movement, and nothing so vigorous that you feel like throwing up after the set.


How do we put it all together?  I'm going to give you the cheapest possible answer:  wait for my next post.  I'll describe a periodization schedule that's manageable for the amateur martial artist!

One tough thing about periodization is that in the traditional martial arts we tend to have a go-hard-all-the-time mentality.  It feels like wimping out to take time off.  Additionally, it's really hard to take it easy in the dojo, in a class.  When your instructor tells you to do 25 pushups, few of us have the gumption to say, "actually, I'm only going to do 10 because this is a de-load week for me."  I don't have an easy answer to this problem, other than to say that if you need a de-load, cut back on classes if you can (this would be a great time to volunteer to teach, which is usually less physically demanding), and really cut back on your outside-the-dojo training.

If you're teaching classes you might consider the idea of scheduling de-loads into your class structure.  Have an easy set of classes every few weeks where you cut back on the conditioning type stuff.  That may or may not meet the needs of your students.  You don't have to waste the week - focus on skill work, really focus on technical details, etc.

Remember, it's not laziness, it's strategy!  You can periodize on purpose or you can be forced into it through injuries and illness.  There's nothing heroic about working yourself into the ground.

Osu!

Periodization Made Simple: Part I: Periodizing physical qualities

We all know people who train consistently - maybe too consistently - by doing the same thing in the gym every workout, time after time.  They might take a break for a holiday or vacation or because of injury, but they generally repeat the same type of workout - the same exercises (generally), similar rep schemes, similar number of sets, and similar tempo, month in and month out.  If they're smart they'll constantly strive to add weight, or reps, to their workout, or switch up the exercises once in a while.  You can certainly make progress with this style of training, but it's usually slow and boring and often leads to staleness and/or injury.

High level athletes realized a long time ago that if they wanted to peak for an event - say, the Olympics, or even a season of their sport - they couldn't train the same way all the time.  They'd do general conditioning for part of the year, then more specific training, and finally sport specific training for the last couple of months leading up to their event.  It didn't take long for them to realize that over the long term they'd make better gains by "mixing up" their training this way than if they did similar types of training every week over the year.

Periodization is a term that means changing aspects of your workout in a planned way in order to maximize long term progress.  Reading the literature on periodization can be kind of daunting to a beginner - articles about periodization are often filled with technical vocabulary that you really don't have to know in order to use the principles.

So I'll make it simple.  I'm not going to define a million different terms for you (partially because I can't remember the difference between conjugate and concurrent periodization), just cover the basic concepts so you can use periodization to improve your training (and you should!).

There are 2 general kinds of periodization:  Periodizing physical qualities and periodizing intensity.

You can periodize your training to focus on different attributes or periodize your intensity.  Or you can (and should) do both!  I'll address the first type here (for no particular reason), and the second type in the next post.

Periodizing Attributes:  What this means is that you emphasize different physical attributes in different training sessions.  For example, you might do hypertrophy (hypertrophy means muscle growth) workouts (8-12 reps per set, 3-5 sets per exercise, moderate or slow rep pace, moderate rest between sets, extra calories after the workout), speed/ power workouts (plyometrics, very fast movements, ballistic exercises like kettlebell swings or olympic lifts, sprints, 3-5 reps per set, 2-3 sets per movement, lots of rest between sets), strength workouts (4-6 reps per set, lots of weight, moderate rep speed, 3-6 sets per movement, lots of rest between sets), and conditioning workouts (energy system training) (circuit training with moderate weights, little to no rest between sets, lots of sets).  None of these workouts are easier or harder, by nature, than the others, they just each target a different type of adaptation.

You could work these into your program in various ways.  You could do 3-8 weeks of one type of workout (say, a session of hypertrophy), followed by another "block" of 3-8 weeks focusing on another (say, strength workouts).  The potential downside is that you could lose too much in one area while focusing on another - you might lose all the speed you gained during your speed "block" during the other blocks, since you might go 16-24 weeks without training for a particular quality.

You could try to avoid that by mixing and matching in various ways.  For example, you could do a little bit of hypertrophy, a little speed work, and a lot of strength work for 8 weeks, then a little hypertrophy, a little strength, and a lot of speed work for the next set of 8 weeks, and so forth.  Think of it as having two minors and a major in each block - you'd do enough in each minor area to maintain your ability and you'd make progress in the major area.

Yet another style of periodization (you can see why there's so much terminology around this subject - each method of periodizing has its own name and associated jargon) would be to alternate workouts over the week but focus on each quality equally.  For example, suppose you work out three times per week.  Do one session of hypertrophy work, one session of speed/power work, and one session of strength work.  That way you make consistent progress in all areas.

Which system is best?  I think a lot depends on what you're training for.  If you're an Olympic athlete who has to "peak" at a certain time of year you need a very different system than regular people - and you probably have a professional coach to help you plan that all out.  If you're just like me - someone who wants to keep improving, but has no specific targets - then I'd say try the last system.  This is also a situation where we're splitting hairs - a professional athlete, who is in a situation where a 2% improvement could mean the difference between winning and losing, has to be much more meticulous in their choices than a weekend warrior.  For us amateurs a simpler system that is easier to comply with is probably more useful than something that could serve as a Ph.D. thesis in exercise physiology.

The "attributes" in question can also vary.  Bodybuilders alternate periods of time when they "bulk up" (add bodyweight - usually a combination of fat and muscle), then "lean out" (lose bodyweight, again usually a combination of fat and muscle, but they're hoping to gain more muscle than fat, then lose more fat than muscle, and come out ahead).  And you can focus on different attributes for different areas of your body - you could combine strength for the lower body with speed in the upper, and vice versa.

I'll give my recommendations on how to periodize your training - assuming you're a karateka with an actual life - with specific examples and a training plan - after I cover periodizing intensity.

Osu!

Strength Vs. Speed?

There is a persistent myth among many people, perhaps especially among martial artists, that strength is somehow the converse of speed; that getting stronger makes one slower, and that gains in strength are necessarily accompanied by losses of speed.  There is a similar myth among some strength coaches that strength gains are necessary and sufficient for gains in speed - that the best way to get faster is to become stronger.  Both positions contain nuggets of truth and nuggets of falsehood, and if we want to maximize our capacity for speed we have to understand the ins and outs of the relationship between strength training and the acquisition of speed.

Both myths are based on some observations that are truthful,commonplace, and prima facie contradictory:

• The strongest people alive are not the fastest people.  Elite level powerlifters are not particularly quick.
• Untrained people who take up powerlifting or strength training often get much quicker very quickly.
• The most visibly strong people - the most muscular people - are often not fast at all.  The stereotype of the lumbering bodybuilder is often based in truth.
• When training a team the members who gain the most strength usually gain the most speed.
• Very quick people are often not successful when they try to lift heavy weights.
• It's simple physics - the stronger you are, the more force you can exert, which means you can have greater acceleration.  Hence you're faster!

How can we make sense of all this?  Does strength training make people "musclebound" and slow them down?

The answers are, "yes," and "no."  In no particular order.

We see two different kinds of errors made, depending on which myth the person works on.  Sometimes we see a karateka grinding out heavy strength workouts three times a week, for an hour or more each time, over many years, constantly pursuing another twenty pounds on his squat, deadlift, or bench.  He might practice routines found in muscle magazines - sets of 8-10 reps, done to exhaustion, with lots of isolation movements to target specific muscles.  He slows down as time goes on, but attributes that to the aging process, not his own training.  He probably thickens over time, not fighting the slight spread around the midsection because he tells himself that the numbers growing on the scale are, after all, mostly muscle.

The aging lifter's counterpart is thin and undermuscled, often female, a karateka whose most intense movement is a pushup, which she'll do in large numbers.  She does a lot of core work, and if she lifts at all, she uses small dumbells and lots of unstable surfaces - balancing on a swiss ball or hanging from straps or doing something else to make exercises harder without actually doing anything that really requires maximal force production.

Neither of these methods will maximize your martial arts potential.  To be as good a karateka as you can be you want to be strong yet supple; capable of generating large forces in very quick bursts, with an iron core that can withstand very high forces over relatively short periods of time.  You don't want to be able to run a marathon - or at least, you don't want to train for that, because doing so will sacrifice your power.  You want to be solidly built but not too bulky, because at a certain point extra muscle just means extra inertia and you'll lose the ability to move quickly.

So... how do we train for that?  How do we make our bodies generate more force without getting bulky or slowing down?

1. Once you've learned how to do a movement (when you first learn a movement you have to learn how to do it with good form - that should only take a handful of sessions, and during that time you can afford to do plenty of repetitions) aim to keep most sets in the power range: an intensity where you would fail within 5-7 reps.  That doesn't mean you always train to failure - it just means you mostly do movements where you would fail if you did 6 or 7 reps.  You can do sets of 3 with that same weight, just don't start doing regular pushups and think you're strength training when you can do 25 pushups without stopping.
2. Train mostly compound, multijoint movements and only do a few movements per workout.  Try to cover your whole body with just 5 or 6 exercises (one arm pushups, chinup, bodyweight row, kettlebell swing, and one legged squat will work your entire body, for example - there are lots of other combinations).
3. Strength train twice a week, no more.
4. Always alternate speed training with your strength training.  Don't bench press on Monday, then bench again on Thursday unless you've practiced moving as fast as you can on either Tuesday or Wednesday (or both).  You need to transfer that extra force into faster punches.
5. Lift fast at least some of the time.  Bench pressing, or one arm pushups, are fine exercises, but most people don't do them explosively.  Alternate exercises like those with clapping pushups or medicine ball throws - something hard (requiring a lot of force) but which results in your limbs moving at a high speed.  A maximum effort bench press may produce a lot of force but your hands aren't going to be moving very quickly.  Throwing an 8 lb. medicine ball as far as you can requires both force and handspeed and needs to be a bigger part of your training routine.

Strength training will not slow you down:  Incorrect strength training will.  You will meet people who trained poorly and got slow because of it - don't let that experience sour you to the benefits of proper training.

There is something you learn - a neurological ability - that you can only learn by exerting maximum force.  Nothing will add snap to your punches as much as 6 or 8 weeks of weight training for someone who has never lifted before - that newfound ability to muster force at the beginning of a punch can be remarkable.  But building up to a 400 lb. bench press won't make you continually faster - at some point the grinding strength increases become counterproductive.

Exactly where does continued strength training become useless or, worse, counterproductive?  I wish I knew the exact answer to that.  Someone with a 100 lb. deadlift will be faster and more explosive if they can get up to a 200 lb. deadlift.  You won't get the same benefit going from a 300 lb. deadlift to a 400 lb. deadlift.  Nobody knows exactly where that cutoff is.

I suspect that stabilizing at one dedicated grinding strength workout - doing movements like the deadlift, bench press, or their equivalents - every week or three workouts every two weeks will give you the most bang for your buck.  For your first year or two of strength training do it twice a week, then taper off the volume.  If you start losing strength, add in some cycles (6 or 8 weeks) of twice a week training again, until you find a comfortable threshold of volume for yourself.  And the entire time you must continually work on speed.

Remember, one of the fastest human beings we've ever seen, in terms of fighting speed, Bruce Lee, was not coincidentally one of the earlier advocates of serious strength training for martial artists.

So get out of the dojo once in a while and swing a kettlebell around.  Or, perhaps better, load up a barbell and really tax yourself.  Your karate will thank you for it!

Osu.