The yearly plans tool allows a user to plan on a yearly scale. The normal style of periodization, or systematic planning of athletic training, is to divide the year into macrocycles, mesocycles and then microcycles. The purpose of this is to ensure that the best possible performance of the athlete is reached at the most important times of the athlete’s year, which are typically competitive events.
- Macrocycles refer to the overall training period, usually representing a year.
- Mesocycles refer to a period of time that is anywhere between two weeks to a few months, from preparation leading up to competition.
- Microcycles refer to a short training period of generally up to 7 days.
A yearly plan can be broken down into increasingly smaller subdivisions according to how detailed the plan needs to be, and circumstances such as travel and competitions can be highlighted. Once the structure and major events (such as competitions and travel dates) of a yearly plan have been identified (using the yearly plans tool), event forms and calculated fields with performance standards or custom icons can be incorporated and volume and intensity for each event form type can be adjusted. As the year progresses, an athlete’s actual volume and intensity for each event form can be measured against what was planned.
Once a yearly plan is created, it can be applied to multiple people.
Steps to create a yearly plan
- Log in to Smartabase to view your home page.
- Select the yearly plans tool.
- Choose Create a new New Plan.
- Specify the plan’s name, start date and start day.
- Specify the type, name (if the option type is selected) and coloring of macro, meso and microcycles.
- Add periodization events.
- For each periodization event, choose whether to enable Plan Details.
- If planning details, for each periodization event, choose which fields from the event form you wish to plan for and display actual data from in the event form. If any of these fields are entered in table mode, specify how many repeats (rows) should be included in the yearly plan.
- For each periodization event, choose whether to show a volume and intensity chart.
- For each periodization event, choose whether to calculate volume and intensity.
- Choose whether any additional rows are required.
- Select Next to go to the yearly plan builder.
- Specify which planned values will appear in the cells for macro, meso and microcycles.
- Specify which planned values will appear in the plan details for each periodization event.
- Specify the volume and intensity for each periodization event (if enabled).
- Save the yearly plan.
- Re-open the yearly plan and choose which athletes it should be applied to.
- Select Next and then Save.