Periodization Training: Play better longer

Hi and welcome to the Daily Brew. The topic today is gonna start of with Padraig Harrington misses a cut. He's won 2

Hi and welcome to the Daily Brew. The topic today is gonna start of with Padraig Harrington misses a cut. He's won 2 majors this year and the average golfer is going "How in the heck is this possible. This guy playing so well, he misses a cut." Well, I wanna talk to you about periodization training. And that the best players in the world not necessarily are going to win every single week. We have seen that over the years. And I have learned an awful lot from being around some of the best sports psychologists and being around some of the best players and seeing what they do in a certain way. And I give a lot of credit to Dr. Jim Lear [unk] who I had an opportunity to work with a lot back in the '80's and '90's and Jim explained to me that the Russians back in the 70's were the first to introduce periodization training into sport. And their Olympic athletes, especially their weight-lifters, would peek themselves at the right time so that they were in the best condition and they were ready for the match. And he also explained to me that if you work somebody on a linear stress level, the linear stress will sooner or later break you down and you'll actually go into a crash mode. You have to work more in ways. And that's what periodization training is all about. So if we take a look here at what Padraig has as far as his years starting with his Open win, which is a very emotional experience by the way for anyone, so, as Padraig has won his second British Open, this is back in 7/20 of this year, you'll notice that, we're gonna just put a little line right here as the peak and then the next week, he took a week off. So, I'm gonna go ahead and drop it down alright. Now recovery is a very important aspect of periodization training. And we'll talk a bit more about that. So let's go through the rest of this year so far to date. The next week, he plays in the Bridgestone event up at Firestone. And he finished tied for 20th, okay. So I'm gonna work it back up here a little bit. The week after that was the PGA Championship and he ends up winning that. So, his second major of the year. That is a big peak alright. Now the week after, again, he took a week off, alright. Drop it right down. And then as I move to the following week which he missed the cut, he shot one over. It was respectable; it wasn't like he played terrible by any means. So at Barclays, he's missed the cut. So, you can see that he is on this upward ramp coming off of the week off, alright. And I wanna explain that because part of really understanding how to be your best is realizing that you cannot be your best every single week. There are ups and downs. Everything is cyclical. And that they have done a study on the PGA tour. This is the interesting stat that I shared with some of my players. In fact, it's made a huge impact in the way that they think and how they actually depressurize themselves. They realize that you can't be your best every single week and you know, when you're having those, those difficult downward slides, you'll let it happen. You'll let it bottom out. And then you work yourself back up again. And it's allowing them to enjoy the journey down, learn what they need to and prepare themselves for the next ride back up again. And that's gonna allow them to peak. The study was done that over the 12-month period of a PGA professional's career, during that 12-month period, 7 weeks they went 80% pf their money and the rest of the time, they're just going through their downward cycles and maybe coming back up again like what we see with Padraig right here. So, they're playing for 28, 29 weeks out of the year, 22 of those 28 weeks, they went in 20% of their money. Those are their up and downward period. So getting yourself to peek yourself at the right times is a key. So, if we go back and were gonna take a look now at probably the best 2 seasons that I have seen in golf, it was actually back in 2000 when Tiger Woods and Annika both played brilliantly. And I took their entire year and I put it on a chart that's similar to this. Being their performance going up like this and their year going out like this. And, what's interesting is, they both won, I believe 9 tournaments. Maybe one of them won 10. But as we took a look at their year, it was almost identical in the way that the waves work. They work, work like this, okay. And if we define one of these waves, it would look something like so. We break it down into a couple different categories. The first would be what we call development and during development time, it could be 4 or 5 days, it could be a week depending on where you're at and what you're working on. You're working on fundamentals, you're working on preparing yourself for this wave that you have going up. You maybe even working with a trainer and physically, you know, going through that process. The second wave is what we call precompetitive. And during this time, that's probably where Padraig was last week, okay. He's getting himself back up again, he's getting himself back into being into the next phase which is peak, alright. The peak is when you're going to win your events. Those are the 7 peaks that we talked about throughout the traditional year on the PGA Tour. Alright. So you go from precompetitive to your peak. Now in the next one and the most important is the recovery. And I wanna talk a little bit about that because, that's the one that's the most, that's the one that's the most challenging for me as a coach. Because when a good player is playing well, they wanna continue to play. When a good player is playing poorly, they wanna continue to play. But it's very important that you help them take time off and recover and recoup so they can get themselves back into their next flow. It's a very important aspect. So for your parents that are out there, working with your juniors, its important for you to understand, they can't be their best all the way across. So, choose the weeks that you want them to play the best. Maybe it's the golf courses that they enjoyed the best. Maybe it's the best tournament, like it's a state high school championship, whatever coming up. And work it back from there so you know that they have time to recover, to go through development, to go through precompetitive and be ready for their peak performance when it's most important to them. You start practicing this way, by the way, the first one to start doing this in golf was Jack Nicklaus. And he's done, obviously, he did extremely well. If you take a look at his career and how he organized himself, he started preparing himself for certain weeks which were the major championships. So you start taking this sort of a practice to your training. And it's gonna certainly help you play better golf over the long run of your career. So until next time, happy golfing.