Abstract

Since various sports differ in number of competitions athletes participate in, difference would come in the periodisation patterns as well. For instance, endurance sports such as marathon and long distance running, limit participation of the athletes to few competitions within a year/season. This results in planning long macrocycles of training often equalling a year in duration. This happens when major competitions of the year are grouped together (ie, October–November) and athlete can successfully participate in them within one peaking attempt. In case major competitions are scattered over the year or the gap between them is too long (ie, April–May and October–November), we need to follow double periodisation. Power sports, like sprints, jumps, weightlifting, etc, can have their representatives participating in larger number of competitions a year and their planning pattern could be pretty different. It can well fit into double periodisation pattern, but when three to five major competitions are there to participate within the year (ie, March, July and November), triple or multiple periodisation patterns might be of use. Team games like football, basketball, hockey and others, with traditionally long competitive periods when they play league matches for 4–5 months or even longer, plan their macrocycle in completely different manner. They still follow single periodisation pattern but they change the ratio of periods within the macrocycle. Individual/group games like tennis and badminton follow more or less the multi-peaking patterns with very brief and precisely planned training periods (rather blocks). The reason being, besides participation in the four Grand Slam tournaments and year finale in the form of ATP/WTA world championships (top eight only), players need to play at least four warming up tournaments at various surfaces. Atop of it they need to play good number of ranking tournaments to ensure high ranking and good chances for better seeding in the major tournaments.