Planning Training Week

[Gregg Humphreys]

Hello,

Please forgive me if this has already been addressed. I went through my Stadion books and the website and couldn't find the answer.
You have said to perform technical/speed (Judo/Sambo practice) first, followed by strength the next day, followed by endurance the next and then take a rest day. I have several Judo/Sambo practices each week so I don't understand how to implement this with multiple practice sessions.
Again if I have missed something please accept my apologies.

Thank you,

[Thomas Kurz]

The schedule you quote is for people who train mostly once per day and applies to their main workout of a day (in addition to the main workouts, each day or on some days of a week, athletes may do auxiliary workouts as explained on page 59 of Science of Sports Training). Each of these main workouts may address more than one aspect of training, for example, a strength workout typically includes sport-specific strength exercises, so its warm-up should include technical exercises and in its main part the strength exercises are much like techniques of the sport too. Similarly an endurance workout may include sports-specific endurance exercises. So in each of the main workouts an athlete may do similar mix of exercises but with a shifting accent--from technique, to speed, to strength, etc. You are a judo and sambo instructor (I looked you up) so you should know these things.

Optimal sequencing of tasks and efforts in subsequent workouts, whether one workout per day or several workouts per day, is explained on pages 66-73 of Science of Sports Training.

[SDGWarr10r]

If I understand you correctly that means that as the training week progresses the focus won't necessarily be on learning new techniques. Rather the focus would shift to doing the technique faster, with more force, with more load, etc. That would seem to severely limit the amount of new material you can learn in a week.

On a slightly different but related note, how would you adjust your sparring/randori/rolling depending on what day it is?
If the best way to get better at a sport is by performing the sport itself, when it comes to (just as an example) MMA if you want to get sparring rounds in how are you supposed to simulate your 3x5 min rounds at fight pace and whatever percentage of impact that you feel is safe if you are adjusting for what day of your training week it is? This would seem to severely limit the amount of realistic simulation rounds you can get in.

[Gregg Humphreys]

Thank you for your reply and exhortation. It was very helpful.

[Thomas Kurz]

You are welcome. Now, do you have an answer for SDGWarr10r? I am sure he'd appreciate your opinion on his assumptions regarding learning techniques and getting better at a sport, as well as answering his question on realism in sparring.

[Gregg Humphreys]

Hi SDGWarr10r,
First of all I'm not a Sports Scientist, I'm only speaking from experience.
As far as the first part of your question you could introduce new techniques at the beginning of each of your main workouts/practices after dynamic stretching, general and sports specific warmup and then proceed to sparring. After that you could go to sports specific strength or endurance training depending on that days focus.
As to the second part of your question regarding sparring/randori/rolling, I would suggest implementing days where you focus on different aspects of MMA. For example say you have practice four times per week. One day you could focus on grappling, one day on standup and the other two days on both. This would allow you to focus on realistic competitive training scenarios.