I’d like to take this opportunity to go over block periodization as a valuable tool for Lifetime Athletes. I’ll cover the concept in general and compare and contrast it to other methods of training organization. And I’ll explain how we use block periodization in The Lifetime Athlete App, both within our comprehensive fitness for life Training Tribe programming as well as for personalized member training plans.
I am frequently asked several common questions when broaching this topic. How is an organized approach to training better than just doing random exercise? And what are the steps in the design process for the lifelong fitness enthusiast and athlete? These are great questions and they deserve thoughtful answers.
One of our foundational principles here at TLA is that movement is good. It’s good for humans because we were made to move. Quite a bit. That’s where general daily activity (GDA) becomes essential for health. On top of that, exercise, which stresses the body in beneficial ways and leads to adaptations that deliver higher function, is great. But when we take that exercise and turn it into specific training (for your body and your sport) which is directed towards the highest outcomes…that’s outstanding. This makes our behaviors purposeful and meaningful. Results become a reality.
The organization of your training utilizes a sequence known as the vision-goal-plan-program process. That’s a mouthful but it’s really fairly simple. This is a topic we’ve covered before so I’ll be brief. Your vision is how you see yourself in the future. The goal is what you want to accomplish. The plan is the overall structure, often involving a year. And the program identifies and coordinates the specific workouts and schedules that match your objective. It’s the planning part of this process that we’ll focus upon in regard to block periodization.
There are almost infinite ways to describe and implement training. This can be done over any number of time periods, but a year is perhaps most common. Your training year can be divided into seasons, cycles, or blocks…or a combination of them like we do with T2 programming in The Lifetime Athlete App.
Seasons can be the traditional sport seasons of off-season, pre-season, peak season, and post-season. If you are a cyclist, peak season is usually the summer. And for a skier, hockey player, or basketball athlete…it’s winter. Or, you could employ the seasons of the calendar year with respect to what you do in spring, summer, fall, and winter. T2 programming uses our proprietary Seasonality principle in which we apply evolutionary biology to our annual patterns with respect to training volume, training intensity, sleep duration, calorie and carbohydrate ingestion, and circadian-related timing of training. Members have detailed resources explaining all of this magic.
Cycles are another great example of training classification. Again, there are lots of ways but here’s how we do it in T2. A microcycle is a week. The key workouts and recovery patterns. A mesocycle is a month. Each week of the month is complementary. We introduce, accumulate, intensify, and consolidate over a 4-5 week period. Every related group of months is a macrocycle, in which we are emphasizing one Capacity of Human Performance (strength, speed, power, agility, endurance) while we are holding the others at maintenance level. This is also a BLOCK.
We block periodize the year by having a dedicated block for each of the categories. Strength and Hypertrophy (3 months). Power (2 months). Speed (2 months). Endurance (2 months). Agility (2 months). All organized to complement each other, using the seasons and cycles as described. So yea, this is fitness for life stuff, but it’s way more systematic and intentional, yet supremely easy to follow, than the norm. And, we’ve got 4 years of block-periodized programming, set up like an Olympiad, for Lifetime Athletes to enjoy.
We also have Bonus Training Blocks. These are exactly what they sound like. An extra block, which uses our system, that any member can employ any time they like. This could look like the formulation of a customized Annual Training Plan, simply loving a specific capacity and wanting to do more of it, or recognizing a weak area and seeking more work to bring it up to baseline, or beyond.
There are also extensive sections in the App featuring Fun Fitness Routines, Programs, and Courses. Each is unique and comprehensive. Coming next are two more sections: outdoor group sessions, and “one-off workouts.” The names of those may change when the development process is complete.
Back to Block Periodization. A block is a chunk. If you can take your training, and break it into a few chunks which hit on the things you need and want out of your exercise – for health, body composition, performance, and longevity – you are making the most of your exercise behaviors. If you are not doing it already, consider creating an Annual Training Plan which uses Block Periodization. Or subscribe to The Lifetime Athlete App where T2 does it all for you. Either way…you win.