Football Periodization: Review and Opinions

I managed to finally finish Raymond Verheijen’s book Football Periodization, and I must admit that I wish I’ve read it earlier. I highly suggest it for everyone working in intermittent, running-based team sports. Even if I don’t agree with Raymond on all the points, I find it one of the best-written books on the topic of problems of planning in team sports.

I have written extensively on the same issues since 2010, and I believe it is the right time for me to sit down and put my current thoughts in a concise and usable format (again). I recently joined my old club FK RAD as S&C coach, helping them with the pre-season. Having the skin in the game again, made me realize that there are a lot of things that struggle me and I don’t have a clear checklist for dealing with them. So, I will most likely be trying to organize my thoughts in some type of manual (written mostly for me, since that type of work allows me to see weak links in my reasoning, besides defining my own standardized work which I could use to be more agile about).

Anyway, here are some of the blog posts I have written regarding planning approaches in intermittent, running based team sports:

• Planning and Programming of Training in Sport Games
• Problems of the Periodization of Training in Mixed Sports
• Tactical Periodization: Interview With Two of My Colleagues
• Planning The In-season Microcycle In Soccer
• Running-Based Conditioning for Team Sports
• 6 Weeks Running Program for Soccer Players
• 8 Weeks Soccer Pre-Season Plan

The original manual 8 Weeks Soccer Pre-Season Plan was written at the end of 2010 and it needs a lot of updating and expanding, and that is something I plan doing soon.
Some of the ideas that got me thinking again were the following articles by Derek Hansen (Optimal Tempo Training Concepts for Performance and Recovery and Micro-Dosing with Speed and Tempo Sessions for Performance Gains and Injury Prevention) and Keir Wehnam-Flatt webcast on tempo training in rugby.

But before I proceed with writing this manual, I did a short review of the Raymond Verheijen’s book Football Periodization in the video below. I have also used Annual Planner for Google Sheets to enter Raymond’s periodization strategy and progressions.

Besides reviewing some of Raymond’s ideas, I have also presented some of my extensions and considerations, particularly:

• Individualization through use of extra HIT conditioning
• Combining Short and Long HIT conditioning
• Use of GPS to top-up training load and complement under-load qualities
• How to complement Raymond’s blocks with top-up sessions and HIT conditioning

Also, I have used the High Intensity Training Guide to enlist all the HIT drills.