 Hey what's up everyone welcome to another video my name is Dylan and I'm a cycling coach at CTS and today we're going to be discussing reverse periodization. Is it a superior training method to traditional periodization and what does the science have to say about it? I'll go into that and some instances where reverse periodization may work and some instances where reverse periodization is far from optimal. I'll also talk about whether or not traditional versus reverse periodization is even the right question that we should be asking when we're talking about our training. If you're new to this channel I make weekly training, racing and gear related videos going over tips and tricks that I've learned in my 12 years of racing experience that have gotten me to the top of the ultra endurance mountain bike game in the U.S. and as a cycling coach at CTS. If you want to learn how to get faster or just more about the science of training in general be sure to subscribe and if you have a training question or a topic you'd like to see me cover in a future video be sure to leave it in the comments section down below. I do my best to get to all the questions in the comments. Let's jump into today's topic which is reverse periodization and I'll start by defining it. So traditionally with normal periodization you would start with a low intensity but high volume of training in what's typically called the base period. This is when we're months away from racing and then as we approach racing the volume of our training comes down but the intensity goes up. Reverse periodization is just as the name suggests it's the reverse of this. So we start off with high intensity below volume and then as we approach racing we increase the volume and decrease the intensity. So instead of doing your long slow base miles in the winter you would do them in the months right before your A race. This is obviously a huge generalization and not every periodization or reverse periodization model follows this template. In fact reverse periodization is pretty loosely defined and there are many training methods that one might consider reverse periodization that can differ quite drastically. Reverse periodization can be intriguing because you don't have to spend a ton of hours on the bike when daylight is limited and weather is bad and then when the weather improves and you get more time to ride in the day that's when you can spend more time in the saddle. Are they calling for snow again this weekend? Well I guess I'm just going to do reverse periodization this year. From a lifestyle standpoint it makes a ton of sense but will it lead to the best results or the most fitness gains? Now on this channel as I'm sure you know by now if you've watched more than two or three of my videos I like to dig into the science on the topics I'm covering to form an opinion about them. With reverse periodization however there is no science at least none that I could find. The closest study I could find to investigating reverse periodization was this study on different high intensity periodization models on endurance adaptations. In this study 69 subjects were split into three training groups all training for 12 weeks with two interval sessions each week. The groups differed in how they ordered the intensity of their intervals. The increasing intensity group did four by 16 minute intervals during the first four weeks, four by eight during the next four weeks and in the final four weeks did four by four minute intervals. One might describe this as classical periodization since the intensity was increasing and the volume was decreasing. They had another group test the reverse of this and one could argue that this is the equivalent to reverse periodization and the last group mixed their intensity throughout the 12 weeks. They found that performance increased the most with increasing intensity then decreasing intensity and mixed intensity showed the least improvement however the results were not significant so the authors couldn't conclude that increasing intensity was better. Although increasing intensity did show the best response rate of the three groups. Given these findings the authors concluded that ordering interval sessions in any particular way has little effect on training adaptations. So should we just chuck the whole notion of periodization out the window and do whatever we want all year? Well this is still far from what one might consider periodization or reverse periodization and tells us more about how to structure our interval work. Fortunately it seems as long as there's some progression it doesn't really matter. The heart of the reverse periodization argument is that you start off with high intensity intervals and then you start incorporating longer lower intensity rides as you get closer to racing not necessarily that you decrease the intensity of your specific interval sessions. One way to get an idea of what the best training practices are is to look at the best athletes in the world. There are flaws with this reasoning at the local level like when one rider dominates a local race series but somehow has the worst training practices. Man Dylan I don't need your science there's this dude at the local Tuesday night group ride who crushes everyone every week and all he does is CrossFit. I think that if I just stop riding my bike and do CrossFit I can be fast like him. A state champion who trains poorly may have the potential to be a national champion if they train properly. This argument crumbles though when we're looking at world and Olympic champions because statistically they have to be doing something right to be the best in the world given all the people who are gunning for that number one spot and the slim margin of victory at that level. This brings me to a study on world champion and Olympic champion cross-country skiers. In this study 11 skiers wrote down their day-to-day training in the year leading up to their most successful competition of their career. They found that training volume and specificity distribution conform to a traditional periodization model. So one might argue that this is evidence against reverse periodization and I would agree with that. However I think there's a bigger takeaway from this article that might save reverse periodization for some specific events. They found that during the competition phase the training became more specific. If we look at the athletes training we can see that they do appear to follow a traditional periodization model but most importantly the volume of specific work increases as they get closer to competition. This right here is what defines periodization. Periodization doesn't necessarily mean moving from high volume to high intensity. It just means that as you get closer to your race your work becomes more specific and usually for most racing this means higher intensity although not for all types of racing. Let's take for example ultra endurance races where you'll be racing for more than seven hours and up to 24 hours or even multiple days. In this case making your training more event specific would mean increasing the volume of your training. One might call this reverse periodization. As an ultra endurance racer myself I typically don't bring down my training volume as I get closer racing until I start tapering. I instead keep my volume consistently high and increase my training load by increasing the intensity. This doesn't really fall into what one might consider classical or reverse periodization but it's periodization nonetheless because my training is getting more specific to the demands of the event. For people doing ultra endurance events reverse periodization in a way may actually work because high amounts of volume is exactly what you need. I would argue that even for these people though you don't want to go straight from the off season straight into high intensity intervals. A review on the best practice for training intensity and duration distribution in endurance athletes stated that an established endurance base built from high volumes of training may be an important precondition for tolerating and responding well to a substantial increase in training intensity over the short term. On top of this you gain fitness from high intensity work quicker but you also lose fitness from high intensity work much quicker. Once you stop doing that sort of training it may only take a couple weeks for you to see substantial decreases in your high intensity ability. This is why I suggest that if you're going to do a form of reverse periodization for ultra endurance events that you keep that high intensity in there and instead increase your volume as a means of increasing your training load. And even ultra endurance events have bits of high intensity sprinkled in. In my last video I reviewed my power file from the Croats Hand Buck 50 which is a 150 mile gravel race. The race took over seven hours so it would certainly be classified as an ultra endurance event but during that event I spent 34 minutes at zone six or vo2 max style intensity and above. And this is not uncommon for long races. Even in all day events you may spend a significant amount of time above your ftp either as a race winning move or as a necessity because of the terrain. On top of this intensity work over threshold can bring up your threshold quickly and can be used as a way to boost your threshold before an event even if you won't be spending a lot of time over threshold during that event. Ultra endurance racing is one scenario where reverse periodization with some modifications may work but you also may have heard about some grand tour riders employing a form of reverse periodization before their races. Again these are extremely long events where riders are spending four to six hours in the saddle every single day. For this kind of racing high volumes of training is event specific training and make no mistake these riders are not neglecting high intensity work leading up to their event. Although the days are very long when these riders do go hard like in a sprint or a tt or up a climb they're going extremely hard and these riders work on that ability. And the reality is that most of us are not racing for hours and hours day after day. A lot of cycling events can last 30 minutes to two hours and because of this extremely hard efforts are required. Because of this scrapping your high intensity work for long volume right up before the event would be a mistake. For the vast majority of racers doing criteriums or short track or cross country mountain biking or cyclocross I would recommend sticking to a more traditional periodization model where intensity is high right before the event. This is because relatively speaking these events are lower in duration and higher in intensity. If your goal is crit racing and all you've been doing is long slow five hour rides then you're not going to have that snap of power that you need even if you were doing high intensity intervals in the winter. All of that being said if you bring your volume down too much you may be compromising your season long fitness and there's certainly an argument to be made that you want to keep long rides in your training plan even if you're training for shorter events. So what can we conclude from this? Should you do reverse periodization or is it the worst way to train? If there's one takeaway from the video it's this. If you're asking yourself if you should do reverse periodization or traditional periodization you're asking the wrong question. What you should be more concerned with is whether or not your training is getting more specific to the goal event. Some events require high intensity and others require high volume and you want to make sure that you're meeting those demands in training and that will produce the best results. Thanks for watching and I hope you guys found this information helpful. Let me know your thoughts on reverse periodization down in the comments section below. If you like this video be sure to give it a like share it with a friend and be sure to subscribe. If you want more coaching and racing content be sure to follow me on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook and if you want to follow my training leading into this upcoming season be sure to check me out on Strava. Finally if you're looking for a coach shoot me an email at djonsonandtrainright.com