by Jack Reape

There's an old saying that goes, "Give a man a fish and feed him for a day, but tell him about periodization, and confuse him for the rest of his life."

Periodization has been so confused by the battling forces of oversimplification and over-complication that many athletes consider it to be just too murky of a concept to be realistically applied to their training. In a previous article, Cycle, Peak, Taper, Dominate, I laid out a fairly technical approach to training for a powerlifting competition, with a real application of the concept specifically applied. But not everybody is interested in mapping, planning, and computing all of the numbers involved in their workouts.

Still, quite a few folks have asked me to run through periodization again in a much more basic way for the hypertrophy and general fitness focused athlete. So instead of a numerically based workout generator, this article is going to give you an overview of the history and broader ideas behind periodization, some very useful concepts for you to apply to whatever you do, and a few common mistakes to avoid.