TRAINING BLOCKS  FOR YOUR UPCOMING SEASON

Pre-season – Time leading up to when competitions begin

This is a good time to work, improve on your tactical game and begin working on your ability to spend long periods of time on task. Here is where the most volume of fencing training should be. Exploring new ideas and doing some video analysis work with your coach on yourself as well as your opponents for the season. A pre-season sparring camp is always a good idea to boost your skills ready to hit the ground running.

In-season – Competition months

Steady, but not too intense training, making sure that there is plenty of recovery time before competitions, as well as recovery time after competitions. The hard work has already been done: now you are just topping up and maintaining momentum. Be sure to include time for reflection on any competitions with your coach to give yourself bite-sized goals to work on between events.

Active rest – Taking a break

Taking a break whilst staying active can include things like going for walks, swimming and gentle jogging. Activities that keep the body moving, but are low intensity and low injury risk. Rest periods are important for your physical health as well as your mental wellbeing. By constantly putting your body and mind through the strain of training hard, you are more likely to burn out, cause injury or obtain ‘mental blocks’.

Pre-comp – Leading up to a major performance event

Working up to your milestone event, you might want to consider adapting your usual in-season training plan to include any extra challenges. This might be dealing with travel, acclimatisation, long days and challenges with timings (such as work or exams). If the event happens to fall after a long break from competitions (for example the 1-2 month gap between Cadet & Junior Euros and Worlds) you might need to look at how you fit a pre-season-style training in whilst also giving yourself time to rest before the event. Your coach should be able to direct you with this, and it is worth sitting down together to plan it out.

In your Individual Athlete Development Plan (IADP), there is a tab called ‘training blocks’ where you can record what each period of your training will look like. You do not need to fill them all in straight away, and they can be updated and changed as you work out what works best for you.

In the season planner tab, you can mark where each period falls around your competitions that you have already inputted in order to get an overall view of what your season is going to look like. Be sure to include any other commitments such as exams, family events or holidays. You will be able to refer to this when you are not sure how much training you should be doing.

Also remember to prioritise rest and recovery. It is easy to set yourself high expectations for the amount of training you want to/think you should be doing. If you are not getting your 8 hours of sleep, eating enough carbs and protein and warming up or cooling down effectively, you are only going to hinder your progress.

As always, if you make any changes to your IADP, don’t forget to upload the updated version here.

Now is also a good time to think about what your training will look like this season. Your training should peak and dip throughout the year depending on competitions and off-seasons, and should also focus on different things. This is called periodisation.

Off-season – a time of no competitions

This is a time to build up your general fitness. Fitness can take a long time to build, but will last for a few months before dropping again, so it is ideal to take advantage of no competitions to focus on gym sessions to build yourself a strong base and high tolerance to physical activity.

Now could also be a good time to focus on your technical goals and improving your movement skills.