Periodizing...period.

From Bill Bowerman's book High-Performance Training for Track and Field "the term periodization simply means dividing the training process into periods of time with different training emphases, goals, and lengths. Each period prepares the athlete for the next, a more advanced training period, until the athlete peaks at the most important competition of the year."

"Periodization is an attempt to make training an objective process. It points the training effort toward the major goal. Training is a very complex process, involving both internal and external variables. It is affected by the quantity and quality of training, by rest, and by the competitive experiences of the athlete"

"An athlete uses periodizing training so he can:

• Peak at the ideal moment
• Achieve the optimal training effect from each phase of training
• Make training a more objective process

Basically, what Coach Bowerman is saying is that by periodizing, you gradually build your fitness in phases. You aren't going to start the first day of the training cycle by trying to sprint 20 x 400m with half rest. You can try. If you don't crap your pants and pass out on the track, you're just going to make yourself feel like garbage and you're not going to garner any real benefits from the workout. However, if you spend 6 weeks building your aerobic and muscular capacity - along with your running efficiency - then you spend 6 more weeks increasing your anaerobic threshold, along with your aerobic capacity and muscular strength (still increasing running efficiency) THEN you run 20 x 400m, chances are you'll have a pretty swarthy workout and you can walk away feeling like a bad ass, not like you just got hammered by a swarm of midgets for 90 minutes. The best part? You can still come back the next day and run again.

But running a BA workout is not your goal. Your goal is to run a BA race, I get it. So, what happens if you run a 20 x 400m workout and walk away feeling like a boss? You develop what basketball players and baseball players refer to as "momentum". You develop a psychological advantage for your upcoming race relative to your previous races (and likely an advantage over your opponents). Moreover, in addition to your newly found psychological momentum, you actually garner more physiological benefits from being in shape enough to handle a workout like that than you would from just going out and trying to crush a repeat workout before you're ready.

The short: you've got to have some fitness before you try to have a lot of fitness. You're not going to build a house that kicks ass on a foundation that sucks ass, it's a scientific fact.

If you've been putting in the work, phase II of training begins on Monday. Phase II is hard. Phase III is harder. Phase IV is harder yet. But then when you run your race and set a pr with ease, it all is worth it.

If you're not periodizing, you're not aiming at anything, so how can you expect to hit it when it counts?

We'll end with a quote from the man Bill Bowerman

"Curiosity is a critical component of coaching success. It means that the coach is always seeking new methods, better techniques, and answers to the many questions that appear during the annual training cycle."

Stay curious my friends.