In sports, programming physical training contents alongside technical and tactical sequences is supposed to be an easy practice, especially when you have been doing this for a long time. If you’re working with Olympic sports and preparing for some yearly competition, there are a lot of training programming and periodization resources, and a lot that can be done to develop athletes to reach their maximum potential. In team sports, competing for 6 to 10 months throughout the year, however, the planning practices and approaches are dramatically different and can vary widely from team to team.

THE REALITY OF PLANNING

 What about fitting your strength block periodization in between the cup game on Tuesday and the away game next week when you play Commanders FC, the team that is just fighting with you at the bottom of the ladder? When do you program your speed sessions, before or after the extensive travels of the international break? Do you run the aerobic conditioning phase when players return from holidays the week before the season kick-off, or during the Christmas break which could be the only week off you may have (if you are lucky not to compete in the UK!!)?

All coaches and backroom practitioners will tell you that the typical programming unit composed of a large macrocycle including some medium-term mesocycles is generally reduced to game fixtures dynamics in team sports. Outside of some parts of the pre-season (and not always with the extensive summer tours that some big teams have to deal with), the challenge is more or less to reach an acceptable level of metabolic and neuromuscular fitness and manage players training status throughout the season in relation to game participation, travels and injuries.

But the reality is that you don’t hear much about block training anymore, and periodization may only come into play when discussing Tuesday vs Wednesday training contents!! In fact, periodization at this point comes back to how you design your training days in relation to 1) the distance from the last game, 2) the proximity to the next, and 3) which are the physical capacities that you may be able to target within this context.

THINGS CHANGE

Beyond being able to adapt their training philosophy, coaches have to embrace change and enjoy being comfortable with being uncomfortable. Things in fact change even more often than you think. Playing an extra cup match during the week, playing on Friday evening rather than on Sunday as usual, moving the match earlier after lunch instead of after 8 pm as per usual… things suddenly get way more complicated, as you still have to run the sessions every day and keep doing the other millions of things you have to do.

INDIVIDUALISATION

What if on top of all of this you desperately want to tailor your approach to better manage players individually, focusing on the load compensation of the substitutes, optimize player rotations when games start to be more and more congested, integrate special treatments and contents in relation to some of your key players’ preferences/needs, or look after the young athletes who never play but could definitely be the future of the squad?

VARYING COMPETITION DEMANDS

Additionally, with different competitions (League, Cup, International events), different opposition, different tactics and different weather you very likely have different expectations in terms of both physical preparation and performance output from a week to the next; the stimulus required each week is then likely to consistently change… which adds another layer of complexity.