The Death of Periodization
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The Death of Periodization — Drew and Alex Go to War
Drew wrote an article called "The Death of Periodization," posted it on LinkedIn to see what would happen, and then got into fights with people on Instagram for a week. This episode is the full breakdown — what periodization actually is, why it doesn't work for tactical populations, and what to do instead.
What we get into:
Defining the thing first — because not a single person in the online discourse could do it. The NSCA definition: the logical and systematic process of sequencing training interventions to achieve peak performance at appropriate time points. Every version of periodization, whether block, linear, nonlinear, conjugate, or West Side, shares the same five assumptions. The most important one: that biological adaptations follow a predictable course. They don't.
Why periodization is a Soviet export — and what that means. Most of the foundational periodization literature is mapping sports science onto communist economic planning. The fact that it works for some athletes says nothing about the thousands who got thrown out because the system didn't work for them. Throw in a hefty amount of PEDs and reconsider how much of that literature applies to your garrison brigade.
General adaptation syndrome is not a predictive model. It's a descriptive model. Hans Selye never explained what makes something stressful, never told you how much stress causes adaptation, and never specified when the resistance phase begins or ends. Also, his exhaustion phase was death. Not fatigue. Death. The field of stress physiology left him behind decades ago.
The Milo and the bull problem — and why progressive overload is almost universally misunderstood. Milo didn't get stronger because the bull got bigger. He was able to lift the bigger bull because he got stronger. The causal arrow runs the other way. Coaches who think increasing the stressor is what drives adaptation are going to keep injuring athletes and blaming the deadlift.
What to do instead — navigating versus forecasting. Shorten the prediction window to what the environment actually allows you to control. A week at a time. Collect information continuously. Modulate stressors based on what the athlete is actually showing you, not what your spreadsheet said they should be doing six weeks ago.
The low-hanging fruit problem. You've got people debating intricately periodized strength plans for soldiers who are failing a two-mile run where the passing standard is a ten-minute mile pace. That's what this conversation is really about.
Also in this episode:
Joey Chestnut vs. Usain Bolt in the Glizzy Gauntlet — one hot dog, then a hundred meters. Drew and Alex land on the correct answer. So does Usain Bolt.
The Army's new testosterone testing program — rapid fire thoughts, concerns about fertility consequences, and thoughts and prayers for military endocrinologists.
Mentioned in this episode:
Drew's articles — The Death of Periodization and The Art of Training at mopsandmoes.com
John Kiely — Periodization Theory: Confronting an Inconvenient Truth; Periodization Paradigms
Thomas Kuhn — The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, paradigm shifts
Franco Impellizzeri — operational frameworks and self-fulfilling prophecy in periodization
Matt Clark — Eight Myths We Can Combat Readiness
Long and Strong — the Mops and Moes training program on TrainHeroic →
Views expressed are those of the speakers and do not represent any official organization.
