OK, its 3:10 in the morning and I can’t sleep. Why?  Something is bothering me in the back of my head, the paranoia  of currently not training enough and visualizing my opponents training twice as hard, the dates March 27th,28th, 29th and June 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th resounding in my heads. Feeling like if I missed the bus once again. By now some of you have figure out what is bothering me. I feel I am ten pounds to heavy ten pounds to heavy ten pounds too weak and that I am running out of time, and life circumstances are piling up that will keep me from adequately preparing for the Panamerican and World Championships of 2009. Now I have the competitor that beat me in the quarterfinals last year in my head ( not a good memory) and how much ground I have to make to be at his level in 4-6 months.  Let me also mentioned than in one month I’ll be 24 and the urgency to accomplish certain goals is on the high.Before we go on with this article let me say that I am responsible for not adequately preparing myself before, for not having a plan, for not adjusting my priorities correctly in the previous years. I hope we can put an end to a career of bad planning with what follows.

I have been doing some research about a topic that many are familiar with but few follow. I am talking about “Periodization.”‘ I started researching this topic a couple of wweks back after speaking with my coach about how good Crossfit was and if I do more and more of it I will achieve my goals. Blah, Blah, Blah…Don’t get me wrong, I love the circuit training workouts from Crossfit, I consider these workouts tons of fun, but back then my coach mentioned that Periodization training has been scientifically proven to be more effective that random circuit training workouts. Now keep in mind that him and I at that point ( and still are ) very inexperienced in this topic.

In a nutshell he mentioned that it doesn’t make any sense for a baseball pitcher to do Olympic lifts that may affect his throwing speed ( look at Mark Marguire, he can barely throw) and on the same token in BJJ we should focus on exercises that help our BJJ. I was like that makes a lot of sense, so that same day I ordered from Amazon.com the following two books from where most of my research its being taken:

Both Books add up to 700 pages! I had just embark myself on a long journey on the subject. Lets begin with the basics and I warn you that since this is our first attempt at making sense and designing a periodization regimen for BJJ it will need to be polished and re-polished many times, but always remember a plan is better than no plan and we have to start somewhere. Lets begin with a definition.

Defining Periodization

Scientist’sDefininition:

Periodization: Theory and methodology of training.

Athelete’s Definition:

Periodization: The Art and Science of Planning a Successful Season

This science depends on the advancements on like: Anatomy, Physiology, Biomechanics, Statistics, Test and Measurements, Sports Medicine, Psychology, Motor Learning, Pedagogy, Nutrition, History, Sociology , etc… and in order to improve on our training methods therefore not only must we apply Peridization principles but stay on top of advances in those areas and observing the information currently available. Pretty much our goal is to set a seasonal plan and to improve on it through measurements and keeping upto date with improvements being made in each of those areas.

At this point I will begin only speaking about periodization  with regards to its application to BJJ.  In our next article we will discuss different Strenght  Training Programs , their pros and cons, and why periodization leaves them in the dust.

Here is the following article:

Understanding Strength Programs