A Roadmap of Achieving Peak Performance

Note: This article has a lot of track and field references, but is useful for any athlete.

Track season is winding down, and between the conference championship and regional meets, it is always interesting to observe the transformation of athlete’s physical states throughout the training process. One of the most difficult things for me to accomplish when I was a track coach was to make sure that my kids would do well at particular track meets throughout the season, but then do “really well” at the conference meet, and finally “peak” at the national championships.

Periodizing a training year is kind of like running a 400, run hard, and accelerate into the final turn. Easier said than done

Sometimes I feel like peaking at key points throughout the training season can be likened to the race plan for the 400m dash. Nearly every plan I look at for the 400 looks something like “run fast, then run faster, then give it all you got at the end of the race”. Not all that dissimilar from getting athletes to peak at key points in the season…easier said than done! By the time you get to that final “100m” of the season, many people are really squeezing the last ounce of available performance out if they haven’t tightened up and slowed to a crawl yet.

This year has been a wonderful one for me because of the chance to strength train, and observe the performance of dozens of track and field athletes via 5 different coaching schemes through a long outdoor haul, so I would like to share a few insights I have gained in this year, and the past, in regards to achieving the best possible performance in athletes when it counts the most.

The training “circle of life”

Training and peaking on a year-round scale, and thinking that there is only one time each year that an athlete can be at or near their best is foolish, as an athlete can have several points each year where they are blazing up the track or jumping out of the gym. The key to making the most out of these points, however, is understanding how the training cycle works.

Here it is: Load > Intensify > Peak > Recover > Repeat

For some reason, many coaches think this whole business is meant for one cycle a year, but that really isn’t true. I train a handful of clients online with no championships timeline, and we run a modified cycle like this once every 8-12 weeks. If you are training with no particular season, you have a little less to worry about than if you are a track and field athlete with key competitions throughout the season.

Training with no key competitions (and the one most of my online clients run) can look something more like this:

Load > Intensify > Repeat

This type of training is fantastic for the average trainee, because it stresses continual progress without the stress of needing to be sharp for a given competition. If there is one thing that sidelines long term progress (or being at your best at the end of the competitive season) it is trying to get too much performance out of an athlete who doesn’t have enough to “give” at that point of their training. Basically, try to get intense for too long without a reset, and you will crumble.

Here is a key point: “PR” efforts in experienced athletes always come with a cost. The relative cost of that PR is going to depend on the following variables:

• Nearness of the athlete to their genetic ceiling
• How big the PR was in relation to recent past performances
• How much volume that athlete has been using up until the PR

The closer the athlete is to their genetic ceiling, the longer it will take to reset from a PR. A beginner can string multiple PR’s together in their first few months of training, because each PR doesn’t tax the body all that much. Advanced athletes might take up to two weeks to recover from a serious PR… or more, depending on how significant the effort was. Ask a world class Olympic weightlifter how they feel a week after the World Championships, and even though they performed only 6 lifts at their peak, chances are that their CNS is pretty well shot.

I have found through experience that the bigger the PR in relation to recent performances, the worse things will be for long term progression. The best results are those that come about in short increments. Fast PR’s usually happen because of the following: rapid intensification of training means with a subsequent drop in volume. This is great for a quick result, but unfortunately, it means a drop in the total training volume of an athlete. Good athletes need big volume to maintain their advanced physical states. Drop the volume for too long and you’ll end up in trouble.

Regarding the last point, if you can PR running a high volume setup in the midst of heavy training, you can rest assured that big things are to come. When I was coaching track, it was always my goal for athletes to find solid performances early in the season in the midst of reasonably heavy training loads, which usually included a big lifting session the day before the meet.

A periodized plan for fencing. I think someone had too much time on their hands

Peak Performance Errors and Corrections:

Coaching is a journey, and nobody gets it right the first time around. Most don’t get it right the first dozen times around; there are a lot of important variables and pressure to do well that can cause a less than optimal result. The following is a short list of some things I have picked up through various failures and observations through the years that have made me a better coach.

Mistake #1. Allowing big time performances back to back weeks in mid-season.

There should be some sort of progression throughout the training year and competitive season. This progression should be fairly linear and thought out. Make a small build up to important competitions and then use a small back off to reset after those meets. The problem happens when coaches don’t take into account the CNS cost of big time performances in the mid-season. Big time breakthroughs by athletes are fantastic, but there needs to be restraint following those breakthroughs. Nobody keeps making big PR jumps the whole year.

Something that I have seen that has never failed to ring true is this: an athlete who lays down two big time performances in back to back weeks will have their “system screwed up” for a month or more following those two weeks. I have seen this happen in high jumpers (myself included), shot putters, sprinters, etc. You can’t beat it. This of course is more prominent in college and above athletes, as many high school athletes are so far from their genetic limit that they can usually recover quickly from this type of scenario, often in 2 weeks instead of 2 months.

Mistake #2. Getting PR greedy

This mistake follows the first one. Don’t get too greedy for PR’s. Know when you plan on being at your best and make a plan to get there and back off of it. A fantastic quote by Powerlifter Mark Bell is about “Reaching in the strength bucket without getting bit”. This pretty much sums up training. You should walk out of your workout or the track feeling good from a neurological point of view, not exhausted and beat down. Your goal is to train to fight again the next day, not the next week or month.

Mistake #3. Being unaware of the athlete’s physical state

At this point in my coaching career, I cannot believe how many coaches go through a season without having any sort of idea where there athletes are at physically. What are your lifts like? What is your 30m like? Overhead back shot put? Unless you test, how can you refine. Sure you can go to competitions and learn from there, but how do you know whether technique or physical readiness were off? Most coaches that don’t record or test will usually jump blame bad meets on the athletes or the conditions.

Do you have a plan for when you are going to be at your best? Or even better, do you know when you will not be at your best? The second is more important than the first. Don’t make the mistake of having periods where you are OK with controlled performances.

Mistake #4. Resetting the athlete incorrectly

Here is a mistake I made as a young coach: as soon as an athlete made a mark that qualified them to a championship, I loaded them up with volume and intensity in the following weeks to help them “peak better” down the road. Unfortunately for me and my athletes, what they needed after their big performance was volume but not intensity. Their CNS was already hit from the big performance, and if I know the CNS, it doesn’t like intensity crammed down its throat after it is already exhausted. Keep tabs on your CNS.

Mistake #5. Trying to stay “sharp” after a championship meet.

This is the worst of the worst mistakes that can be made when planning training out. I have seen it sideline, or at the best, interfere with, the next two months of an athlete’s training and competing. Every single time I have seen an athlete try to stay sharp after an indoor peak (in track and field), it has never ever paid off. These athletes usually end off worse than when they started the indoor season. Back in the Division 3 conference I used to coach track in, many athletes would end up competing at a “spring break” meet down south directly after the conference or national championships. Coaches would usually throw in something about “competing in nice weather, with a good chance to qualify for the outdoor championships” in regards to the meet in their rationale of competing hard.

In our conference I saw so many athletes jump well indoors (particularly high jumpers) and then go flat outdoors largely due to these competitions. Their coaches would usually write it off and say that “it was in the athlete’s head” that they weren’t doing well, but watching the increased ground contact present in each stride, you could tell what was going on: blowing up the CNS at the end of indoor with no transition or provision made for the outdoor campaign. Following up peaking, with more peaking, and then intensity is a clear recipe for disaster. After a championship situation, do yourself or your athletes a favor and reset your body.

Practical Programming Recommendations:

So what is the moral of the story? Simply, it is this: respect the CNS. Don’t get greedy, and have a plan. Know when you are going to load up and when you are going to go for PR’s. When you make a PR run, know when to back off. Don’t try to PR by much each time either, especially as you move closer to your genetic ceiling. In my experience, this usually works to around a 3:1 ratio of building to making PR runs. If your ratio is something like…um… 1:1, or 1:2, you are probably going to find yourself frustrated more often than you are making gains.

Another great, and final tip is to use lifting sessions to prevent early peaking. If you have a mid-season competition, don’t be afraid to get a full volume lift in prior to that competition to make sure you don’t spend too much of your CNS in that performance. As you near your highest competition, start hacking down those pre-comp lift sessions.

Remember, training is not a sprint, it is… what is that long, painful race? Something like that! As Mark Bell would say, “keep reaching into the strength bucket without getting bit”.

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