Wodapalooza is upon us!

We are now five weeks out from the throwdown in Miami. This timeframe marks the final push for a competitive training block within a program. So I want to talk about three things you can start to think about as you plan out your training or your athlete’s training.

The competition phase itself.

Within a program, you need to adjust the training blocks around the goal and ensure that you are teetering back and forth between intensity and volume. That is essentially the simplest way to explain periodization. It is the eloquent balance of intensity and volume in a manner to progressively build/increase someone’s capacity around the needs of their sport. With this training plan, it is very hard - in fact, almost impossible - for a human body to endure intensity and volume over a long period of time. Generally speaking, eight weeks out from a major event will normally mark the start of a competitive training block. This will vary for some, but from a blueprint/big picture perspective, this time will do the job. During this competitive training block, there are a few things that you need to do. However, the biggest focus needs to be the demands of the sport, the rigors of the event, and the fine-tuning of the skills.

So, athletes should start to train across the days of the competition; for WZA this will be shifting their training to a Monday / Tuesday/ Thursday - Sunday block (since WZA is Th-Sunday). When they shift will vary based on the event, but the newer athletes will need more time to adjust to this, while the more seasoned athletes may only need 2-3 weeks here. Athletes also need to work on building movement fatigue and resilience across multiple days. What this means, is doing similar movements multiple times (within a day or across the days). Athletes need to work on getting accustomed to the environment and competition times (which may be different from their normal training schedule). The purpose of the competition phase is to take the athlete’s fitness and get them conditioned by factoring in the environment and circumstance of their sport.

Fueling around competition.

During this time, it is also important to start training athletes’ fuel. Now, we all know that you are not changing anything up. IF ANYTHING, you will increase intake to coincide with the volume that athletes are adhering to, and/or you may need to increase water based on increased sweating due to volume or heat familiarity. But athletes need to get used to eating at different times, be able to perform with prominent liquid calories in their system, and prepare how and what they are going to eat around and during competition. When you compete at WZA, there are a lot of factors that can throw off your hunger/or desire to eat from the heat, competing, stress, and times that you are competing. An important detail is training this so that your body is familiar with what may come so that it is not another new stressor that can throw off performance. 

Adding in a few more circuits of anaerobic lactate work.

What do I mean by anaerobic lactate training? I am referring to twenty to forty five seconds of pure max effort output with optimal recovery time (three to six minutes). What am I referring to with circuits? I am talking about monostructural work (air bike, running, rowing, biking, sleds) for one to three sets and eventually progressing to mixed modal movements that allow for the prescription to be expressed. Now, we know that there will be intensity during competition weekends, however, they probably are not touching pure anaerobic lactate events. So I would recommend putting one in on a Tuesday to build resilience and fatigue resistance for when they experience this at WzA.

The most important thing we can do as coaches is make sure our athletes feel ready and prepared. If they do, then they will be confident. And when they feel confident, magic can happen on the floor!

If you are looking for more information around this, contact us at help@conquerathlete.com and set up a free consultation.

-Coach Jay