A year Macrocycle

[levy]

Dear members.

First of all thanks to Mr. Kurz for everything he´s done for the MA community. A very unselfish work he´s doing and there are alot of people that unfortunatly are training under the guidance of instructors with no education what so ever about the body or it´s functions. Thanks again.

I´m creating three macrocycles for my Taekwondo school since I have children from 6-8 years old, teenagers and a sparring team.

I just created the sparring team and I´m not very experienced in the design of a program for a 1 year period.

My plan:

My idea is to work on body conditioning for 6 weeks and then maintain that condition and compete for 5 months (2-3 tournaments) and then a month off. After that 1 month vacation my idea is to start the 6 week preperation and run the same cycle all over again.

The trainings will gradually incline for 3 weeks and the last week for a tournament a tactical and technical trainings to build energy for the tournament. Tournament performance will clearly result in changes in individual exercices for every student but for the next 3 months I will use the sequence suggested by Mr. Kurz to maintain the physical condition that they now have.

Questions regarding my plan:

1. Given that I attend tournaments 6 times a year (every 2 months) what is the best way to build speed, endurance, strength and muscle endurance (sequence taken from Mr.Kurz´s column) but still give rests without loosing that buildup?

2. Would it be reccommendable that I build these characteristics individually in a 6 week microcycle twice a year and then maintain that build for the next 4 months?

Thanks in advance.

Levy.

[Thomas Kurz]

Your plan of building form for 6 weeks and then maintaining it for 5 months is not realistic. Further, both periodization and cycling of training are applied differently with adults, with teenagers, and with children (if at all).

To make training plans for whatever periods or cycles, you need to know more about the concepts of periodization and cycling. You can begin with Winter 2005 and Spring 2005 issues of Stadion News available at http://www.stadion.com/freebies.html and then read books Science of Sports Training and Children and Sports Training.