Periodisation Training

Robert Forster, P.T. has teamed with Herbalife to create the 24Fit DVD fitness program using the very science that has made Robert so successful.

Periodisation Training was first developed by the Eastern Bloc countries during the Cold War when they sought to dominate the sporting world through science, research, and physical domination. The Eastern Europeans put their collective resources into manufacturing the world’s best athletes. They performed extensive research to discover the most effective training regimes, and were able to control variables in ways the West could not match.

Periodisation training breaks the training program into cycles (or periods) where fitness is developed in a scientifically rational sequence.

Robert Forster team at Phase IV the team of experts assess and train athletes in two broad areas of athletic performance:

Structural preparedness: Structurally, your body needs to be strong, flexible and biomechanically sound to perform correct technique for your sport, and tolerate the training necessary to peak the fitness of your metabolic energy production systems

Efficient metabolic energy production: Metabolically, your ability to produce energy efficiently to meet the demands of your sport is paramount for success

Most athletic achievement is limited by failure of the structural system to sustain the workload necessary to achieve peak metabolic fitness. Injury relates to the structural system as fatigue relates to the metabolic system. Both are failures of their respective systems and represent roadblocks to peak performance, eliminated only by using a scientific, measurable approach to physiological assessment and training. This approach is called Periodisation Training and consistently produceS the best athletic performances across all sports.

Periodistion Training Principles: The Path to Success

It is now understood that exercise is a form of stress on the body stimulating an increased production of natural hormones to shore up the body and meet the demands of the activities you choose to practice. However, the body is such a great tool of adaptation that after about six-to-eight-weeks of the same activity, the body becomes stronger and can handle the load without experiencing stress. The hormone back-up fades, and so will performance, if the exercise stimulus is not altered in such a way as to create stress on the body and hormone production peaked.

We strictly follow the basic tenants of Periodisation training which is realising all exercise is futile if rest and recovery periods are not provided. Hard work is always followed by time for recovery. Recovery is when your physiology evolves, and where the benefits of your hard work is realized. No one ever became stronger during a workout, it is in the recovery period when we become fitter.

This approach solves the training puzzle of balancing hard work and smart recovery, allowing fitness adaptations and a “hardened” body able to sustain all the hard work and recovery, peaking your metabolic fitness.

With the 24Fit Training Program in addition to rest days each week, every fourth week, you will also get to enjoy a modified, more relaxed schedule. The body gets stronger while resting.

Benefits of Periodisation Training

Exploits the body’s powerful hormone response to the stress of new exercise stimulus
Avoids mental and physical burnout and over-training by constantly varying workout stimulus, and providing rest periods for recovery
Allows athletes and coaches to create exceptional peaks in fitness for key competitions and remain fitter all year long
Protects the body from injury as it brings fitness to a peak

Periodisation training calls for consistent (but often varied) work stimulus, built in rest periods for recovery and a scientifically rational sequence to develop fitness to a peak.

First Things First: The Importance of Structural and Metabolic Base Training

Early in the yearly training cycle, all highly effective and repeatable methods of athletic preparation must provide a sound foundation to build performance to a peak later in the competitive season. This foundation for all sports and activities lay in a highly developed aerobic base and well established functional joint stability. This is what Phase IV does better than any one else, and why discerning coaches like Bob Kersee and others continue to turn to Phase IV to create these programs for their world class athletes and recreational competitors.

The Benefits of Aerobic Fitness

Re-engineering your metabolism to burn body fat as a preferred energy source
Spares the vital carbohydrates stores in the muscle cells (glycogen) during lighter exercise and saves it for great finishes
Increasing your fat burning potential avoids fatigue producing lactic acid build up in the muscle cell
The aerobic muscle cell enzymes actually use lactic acid as an energy source and helps to clear it from the muscle cell, delaying the onset of fatigue during exercise
All recovery periods are aerobic and great aerobic conditioning allows for quicker recovery between highly productive intervals of hard work

Why is Functional Stability so important?

For young and old athletes alike, the first prerequisite for athletic performance is the ability of the muscles tendons, ligaments, and fascia to work together and create biomechanically sound movements at the joints. Functional stability is where strength and flexibility blend to create meaningful, synchronized sport specific movements allowing for proper execution of technique and protecting against tissue overloaded and subsequent injury.

Benefits of Functional Joint Stability

Well-balanced strength and flexibility of the muscles and tissues around each joint creates efficiency in movement, avoiding wasteful energy expenditure during performance
Improves force production as proper joint alignment maximizes the leverage created by bones
Creates proper loading of joints to prevent injury
Flexibility and elasticity of properly trained ligaments, tendons, and fascia allows them to act as shock absorbers, storing energy to be given back later in the movement cycle

Maximum Strength Phase

Maximum strength development requires progressive resistance exercise utilizing weights, rubber bands, and other resistive devices. Strength improvements can be accomplished without increasing muscle size and mass! If you don’t want to get bigger muscles, but want a long lean look instead, this can be accomplished with scientific training techniques.

Power Phase

Power is a vital prerequisite for all sports, but in varying degrees. Power and strength are often misunderstood. If strength is the ability of the muscle to develop force with contractions, power adds a time element (i.e. the ability to generate the force quickly is called power). Sport is about power. You import power to the ground with your feet when running, to the ball with your racquet or club and to the pedals on your bike. After developing strength it must be transformed into power to be functional for sport.

Speed Phase

In many sports speed is a critical requisite for success. However, speed for an Ironman athlete is different than speed for a 10K runner. For long events like the Ironman, fast times are achieved with efficiency and the ability to conserve energy to keep going, not by leg speed. In the 10K race, leg speed is needed to do well. For sports requiring greater speed this phase of training involves higher velocity movements to activate fast twitch muscle function.

Peak Fitness

The purpose of the entire Periodisation Training Program is to bring fitness to a peak for a given competition, event or season. After all the cycles of hard work and recovery are orchestrated to build fitness throughout the training period, at the end we reduce the workload and watch your fitness skyrocket! This is called the “taper” and it is the most neglected concept of fitness and sports training amongst fitness enthusiasts and recreational athletes.

Periodisation Training is about revisiting each phase of the program year-after-year. After a brief break in training for total mind and body, you will start all over again with Base Training and all other Phases of Periodisation Training. In this manner you build on last years accomplishments and year-after-year you continue to grow in your fitness capacity. It is a proven, safe and effective method of training. This is why it is now used by nearly all professional sports teams, and it will get results for you too.

Article Courtsey of Phase IV

Follow these periodisation training principles using 24Fit.