Single Periodization questions

Charlie and others,

When planning for an athlete who only has one main season of competition, and only one necessary main peak, how would you design the annual plan? Let us assume that this athlete can train year round, would you adopt a single periodization scheme?

1:Would you prefer to go S-L, L-S, or perhaps speed from S-L and SE from L-S?

2:How would you deal with the fact that training components such as weight lifting or speed work plateau after 12 weeks?

3:How many MxS phases would you include? Obviously this depends on the athlete’s needs, but could you just continually cycle 3-1-3-1-3-1-3… for a long period of the year?

4:When would you taper the other training components to allow the for the continued intensification of speed? Would you go with many cycled blocks, or would you try to escalate the volume and/or intensity throughout the year until a maintenance phase would be required before the competition period?

About the max strength block I would take more time:

3-1-3
2-3 weeks maint
3-1-3

You could “artificially” peak him twice, making it a double periodization.

How many cycles would you use in this manner, and how many weeks would you maintain in the end of the year to allow for the intensification of speed for a peak?

Yes, that would be an option. Would that be optimal, or would it be more beneficial to take advantage of the entire year to build up to one peak?

I need to know the number of weeks you have in gpp, spp, indoors and outdoors. I typical would save the 3-1-3 blocks for gpp/spp unless you have a large block of free time between seasons.

Would that be optimal, or would it be more beneficial to take advantage of the entire year to build up to one peak?

It would be optimal unless your athlete is a beginner.

If you artificially peaked him, would you set up an artificial “competition” period after the first SPP, and then go through a taper to bring him to a true peak?

Or would you taper down the speed like at the end of the SPP, then move to a GPP2 and SPP2 without an artificial competition period?

As sprinterogue explained you may peak him twice. Use first peak to ‘test’ him, apply for a race for a test. Evaluate his performance and plan his next cycle based on evaluated strength and weaknesses. Do all the stuff as it is a real important competition.