Periodisation within soccer
Yesterday I was at a congress in Tilburg about 'coaching talent' and 'talent vs development'.
Their were all kinds of issues discussed but the one that will be discussed beneath is periodisation.
One of the speakers was Scott Miller, assistent technical coach at Fulham FC. He spoke about periodisation as it was just a fancy word for planning and structure.
The main thing he told us about periodisation is that is has to be used as a 'bigger plan'. There is no need to hold on stifly to the periodisation plan. The anekdote he used was he planned the whole trip from London to Tilburg. Train, plane, train, bus, everything was arranged. From beginning to end. But when he left his home, and took the train, it broke down. This caused a massive delay which he had no control of. Arriving at the airport he could only sprint like mr. Bolt would do at the olympics and hope he would make it in time to it's flight.
'You can plan all you like, but in the end, you miss your flight' was his quote.
The same counts for periodisation within competition soccer. There are always factors in the environment you can not have control on. You'll work with human beings and nothing is more variable than human beings. So the clue is, periodisation is the bigger plan, but not hold on to it too stifly.
Of course you can use periodisation, but then from game to game. There are several points why periodisation from game to game can be benefitial:
- The next match fixture is important for the training, because you will not train only on attacking play, when you know your opponent is much better and most of the time you'll need to defend. So there need to be trained 'match-specific'. (will be discussed in a later blog).
- Also it is never clear when a player gets an injury. You cannot see into the future, what makes it harder to periodise.
- The last part is that every game brings something new. If there is a lost game, the next week need to contain points of improvement beceause the weak spots can be developped.
This was the main point Scott Miller wanted to point out to us. You can plan all you like, but in the end you'll work with humans and you cannot plan everything what is going to happen.
So what is your view about it? Periodisation from week to week, or just periodisation from beginning of the season to the end? Maybe something inbetween? ..