Periodisation

The Longevity Exercise Physiologists at Edgecliff, Marrickville, Randwick, Lindfield and Drummoyne often treat individuals who have repetitive strain injuries, athletes with chronic fatigue and recreational athletes who get injured doing something that they have been doing for years. Although these may feel like unavoidable injuries, the magic answer usually involves looking at your exercise routine and preventing long term problems by introducing some form of periodisation.

What is periodisation?

Periodisation refers to the change in rep range, rest time and intensity over a period of time. This can be modified in a “microcycle” (week to week) or “macrocycle” (every 4-12 weeks). The modification of rep range can be linear, where you progress from high reps to low reps over several weeks (or vice versa), or undulating, where you jump between high reps and low reps from week through week or even workout to workout.

Benefits of periodisation

As stated in the intro, one of the largest benefits of periodisation is minimising injury risk. By modifying rep ranges and intensities, you will train to build strength, power, muscle mass and muscular endurance concurrently. For example, this does not allow a tennis player to build up incredible muscular endurance before building a strength base to provide joint stability throughout the tennis match. It will also prevent a powerlifter struggling to recover from workouts because their strength and power base is very high but their muscular endurance is very poor. In essence, training multiple qualities makes you more robust, less prone to injury and ultimately more prepared for life.

Who needs periodisation?

In short, anyone who is meeting the Australian guidelines of 2+ resistance training sessions per week will require some level of periodisation. So the answer is… EVERYONE! Whether your athletic event is playing footy 3 times per week or your athletic event is carrying the groceries to the car, you are going to need a level of muscular endurance, strength/stability in your joints, power and muscular development to promote healthy, pain free movement.

By modifying program variables strategically, it is possible to maximise the expression of any one variable at a given time throughout the year. This is beneficial is you are going away to ski, have a sport season coming up, or you are going on a series of hikes during the cooler fall period. How this can be done is outside the scope of a short blog, but if you would like some help in structuring an exercise program to minimise injury risk, manage old/chronic injuries, or prepare yourself for the changing demands of living pain free life, give us a call:

Longevity Personal Training and Exercise Physiology: 1300 964 002

Check out your closest clinic’s home page for more details: Edgecliff, Marrickville, Randwick, Lindfield, Drummoyne