HOW TO INTEGRATE STRENGTH TRAINING INTO YOUR YEAR AHEAD
There are a number of different phases you should be looking to include in your yearly strength program, in order to make sure you’re in the best physical state when it’s most important.
These phases will be dependent on a range of variables; your training experience, confidence, competency and how much strength training you’ve done in the past. But by looking at these different phases or cycles, you can begin to break your program down - from the 52 week macrocycle, to the four-six week mesocycle and the weekly microcycle.
In an ideal world, you’re going to be cycling through all of these different phases within a year. Here’s how to go about it…
LET’S GET PLANNING!
First things first, grab yourself a blank piece of paper and pen.
Macrocycle (year/season)
Draw a horizontal line across the middle of the page, and roughly mark out each month of the year. Add your one to two main A races into the year, followed by your B and C races. These B and C races will give you the opportunity to figure out what works for you and what doesn’t, before the most important races arrive; did anything not go as expected, did you fuel yourself properly with nutrition, did you choose the correct clothing/equipment etc.
This yearly plan is going to be your basic framework, which you can then work back from, giving you an idea of where you can fit in weeks of tapering, weeks of building and ensuring you are bringing in more complexity at the right times.
Mesocycle (4-6 weeks)
If you’ve got a nice chunk of time between races and events, you’ve got some time to get some solid work done and really benefit from your strength sessions.
Beginning with a block of GPP (general physical preparation) will allow you to develop your basic strength, muscular endurance, technique and confidence. The time you have for this GPP block is going to depend on when your next race is, but we're looking to get at least four good weeks of work to enable the body to adapt to the stimulus.
Following this block, ideally we're going to have another 4-6 week phase of SPP (specific physical preparation), with the aim of working on key areas of weakness, adding elements of complexity and power into the mix.
This is a brief summary of how you use GPP & SPP, but you can read more about it in our recent blog here.
Microcycle (weekly)
Now you might want to grab another piece of paper.
From Monday through Sunday, draw out a weekly calendar of what you are currently doing. What does your week look like? Add in your training times (morning, evening or both, and how long for) and make sure to block out work/study, family commitments, recovery and rest.
Each week is likely to already be pretty full, and there probably aren’t many visible gaps to start fitting in your strength training! But, within that week, you need to find time for two to three, 45-60 minute strength and conditioning sessions focusing on seven key areas within every session (pull, push, squat, hinge, unilateral, core/rotation, gait -based).
Having a conversation with your strength coach will give you a much clearer idea of your areas of weakness, and what types of movements you need to be focusing on. If this is something you need help identifying, click below to find out more about our screening process.
What about taper & off-season?
As an athlete, this is when you need to lead this conversation, and become aware of where the potential peaks might be in both your strength work and your endurance training. If you can be aware of those, you and your coaches can make sure that you’re peaking and tapering at the right times, enabling you to get the most out of yourself come race day.
With tapering, we're going to be backing down the intensity and load, but still going through the motions, making sure we stay sharp and preparing for the event. So make sure to keep your strength sessions in there, with a focus on mobility, muscle activation and some lighter strength work.
As we’ve mentioned before, unlike seasonal sports, endurance athletes tend to be able to train and race all year round - which makes clearly defining an off-season quite tricky.
So what I'd say to you is, during your chosen “break” you should go into more of a ‘dialled back’ maintenance phase, where you're just going through the motions and working on your areas of weakness. You're ideally going to get to a place where a lot of our clients are, where they're simply ticking over, and we’re just problem solving any little niggles along the way.
Throughout the year, this is how your maintenance should look; you should have an underlying tone of regular strength work where you’re looking at certain principles of strength, but you're flowing in and out of it.
CONSISTENCY IS KEY
Overall, your main focus with all of this should be consistency, week-in and week-out. Without this mindset, you’re going to be on the back foot! No matter what ‘phase of your training’, due to the demand of your sport and lifestyle, you need to be doing this work consistently throughout the year.
You’re going to be pushing your body into situations that put fatigue into certain areas. Therefore you need to make sure you are staying on top of, and constantly working on those imbalances. It is fundamental to be spending time working on your mobility, activation, strength and stability, so you’ve got to find a non-negotiable time to fit in those two to three strength sessions each week, to enable you to continue doing the sport you love!
If you’re moving through the gears nicely and consistently, you’re going to see crazy results - whether that’s moving from significant injury through to significant PBs - within the space of 24 weeks. Follow this logical process time and time again, and you’ll be sure to see those gains!
Hopefully this has given you more of an idea as to what goes into a successful year-round strength and conditioning program.
We can help you to make strength training the foundation of your year; simply get in touch to find out how it can work for you: