KoolaidMannn wrote: ↑Mon Apr 08, 2019 4:03 pm
I’m interested on your thoughts about emerging strategies/bottom up programming vs peridoization for meet peaking and just general training, what are the pros and cons of both to you?
Huge topic so bear with me,
First, I just want to give Mike T. a ton of credit. Obviously this isn’t the first time he’s applied an innovative idea to strength sport, the implementation of RPE/RIR has given all of us a ton of ideas to pull from, and I see much of the same happening with the ideas brought forth with discussions of emerging strategies.
So, i think the ideas are sound, if you look at John Kiely’s work, you realize some of the foundation that periodization stands upon is likely pretty reductionistic. If you’ve read some of Barbell Medicine’s stuff on pain and the implementation of the Biopsychosocial model, I don’t think that is the only context in which this stuff applies. I believe Mike T. has talked about this very same model applying to the success or lack thereof of a given training stimulus. This is where I think the bottom up style thrives, standardize the goal posts and observe, rather than trying to fit a peg you’ve worked so hard on making perfectly square (a 12 week training cycle) into a hole that you now realize is a circle (the unpredictability of life/non gym stressors that literally influence the observed training effect). It also takes away some of the “noise” that can cloud a coaches analysis of how the training cycle went with an elaborate plan with a million fluctuating variables. You can better identify the “broken cog” in the machine per say, although I don’t think you can ever have perfect accuracy with the amount of things we can’t control about human physiology. This could, in theory, give you a more confident answer in saying this did or didn't’ work and then make adjustments from there.
Now with that in mind, I think this is largely dependant on the individual, I know a sucky answer. When examining the periodization literature as a whole (Greg Nuckols at Stronger By Science has a great in house meta analysis on this) we do see small effect sizes in favor of periodization for strength. Given, that data has a ton of limitations. One of the main being, in general, non linear plans lacked high specificity efforts, in which the periodized models included them. Greg rightfully points out, sometimes they aren’t really testing the inclusion of periodization but rather specificity. Another important distinction to make is that periodization doesn’t really seem to have an effect on hypertrophy so long as volume is equated. Since we know that hypertrophy seems to be very important for strength, especially as training advancement increases, it's important to note periodization doesn’t seem to have a meaningful effect on that outcome. With that in mind, if you have aquadquate volume, and frequent exposures to efforts specific to the test, I think that is a good recipe for success, periodized or not.
I think a ton of the benefits observed of periodization simply come from the psychological benefit of not constantly being challenged to improve on the same task as the week before (ie if the rep targets drop each week, ex. 8 to 7 to 6, that almost artificially gives your the subjective sense of progression, if strength is the goal). Even if this confidence is artificial, it can provide momentum nonetheless.
You could also make the argument that, in general, repeating that same task over and over increases rates of athlete burnout, but because of carefully monitoring time to peak and the whole point of pivot cycles is to prevent that from occurring, I don’t think it’s a particularly strong argument. One last huge huge caveat to this is the lifter’s own psychological buy-in to the program they are given (Kiely mentions this also). Some lifters will be up to that challenge (in which ES could be a great option), others not so much and maybe would favor a more periodized approach. Trying out both styles, monitoring objective response of each, and finding which creates the best combination of progress and enjoyment is a solid plan.
I also could see using the two in combination, where you would use a mesocycle or two as the stressor to be repeated. This could still follow the general framework of a periodized macrocycle but still maintain some of the reactivity, pun intended, that ES provides. That is just an example, but I don’t think the two are necessarily mutually exclusive.
At the end of the day, training response is so hyper individualized that so long as the main boulders are in place (volume,intensity, frequency, etc.) the exact configuration is extremely flexible. Keeping in mind specificity, adherence/buy-in, and actual response, you can’t really go wrong. I think that favoring the athletes intuition on how its set up exactly will likely yield the best results.
SBS Periodization Meta Analysis:
https://www.strongerbyscience.com/periodization-data/
John Kiely
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29189930
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22356774