PERIODIZATION and Mesocycles

Why is PERIODIZATION important? 

Microcycles, mesocycles, and macrocycles of ski training all revolve around the principle of supercompensation and adaptation. When there is a specific goal we want to accomplish in our ski training over several weeks, months, or years we periodize our training to reflect those goals. 

Mesocycles are made up of several weeks of ski training and reflect a specific adaptation or physical improvement we would like to accomplish over that period of time.  A mesocycle in elite level ski training would likely focus on one of the following themes:

Aerobic base, L1 distance

Threshold base, L3 training 

Vo2max building, L4, time trials 

General Strength 

Max strength 

Power strength 

Velocity strength 

You can see from this example of an outline how our microcycle and mesoscales are planned. We use some 2-3 week cycles and some 4 week cycles (example medium, intensity, volume, easy) versus an easy, medium, hard cycle.) Mixing up this kind of PERIODIZATION is key to creating the best adaptations. 

This graph simply shows the importance of Mesocycle periodization in ski training. If a skier does the same type of training week after week their performance will stabilize over time because the training is no longer stressing the body the right way.  Skiers will adapt to both the duration of their workouts and the intensity of their workouts.

Once an athlete shows an adaptation to a specific training stress it’s time for recovery then a new mesocycle of training. The next mesocycle can share the same focus as the previous one, but should include a new element of volume* or intensity to keep the athlete improving. 

*In skier lingo volume refers to the duration of a training session or the duration of several training sessions. Periods when skiers are training a lot of hours are referred to as volume weeks or volume months.