Concurrent periodisation really confuses me because let’s say you’re an athlete and you have about 6 things to do with athleticism to improve its got to be almost impossible to do all at once. Even if you were a powerlifter I just don’t know how you would set that up it makes no sense to me. Could you possibly help me understand it?
Most of our templates use concurrent periodization and if you were looking for examples, that’d work.
We think that training for multiple, complimentary fitness adaptations works better than selecting one at the expense of others outside of very specific training blocks.
Okay but for example CrossFit is literally an athlete taking all training modalities doing them all at the same time and being okay at them all. Not only is concurrent training harder to program in my opinion, I just don’t know how you just do everything at once. It seems to be suboptimal. If you had a powerlifter why wouldn’t you go hypertrophy strength peaking or a rugby player you want to get bigger then stronger then more powerful it’s way harder to program all at once
I think your main issue with CrossFit is how it’s programmed, not that it’s concurrent. I am not aware that there is any planning in place for their mainsite workouts, which is problematic for long-term development. Probably fine for health though.
I don’t think either is harder to program, but rather used in different situations. I also think that most of the data shows at least equivalent, if. not better strength outcomes from concurrent rather than conjugate periodization. Since there is overlap between low velocity force production (strength), hypertrophy, and high velocity force production (power) I think it’s pretty easy to program them all at once, shifting priorities based on individual needs.
For powerlifters, I think spending a whole lot of dedicated time on hypertrophy doesn’t make a lot of sense unless you’re intentionally giving them an off-season where you’re okay with strength adaptations decaying.
It’s okay to disagree though