One thing I always discuss with my clients is how they set up their training cycles for the long run. For example, what happens when you've spent a lot of time in a fat loss stage or better, you've reached your desired fat loss goal.

We allow for long term periodisation but also for you to have a strategy and planning. This does not mean that things can’t be changed or adapted as your training progresses.

Let's take a look at the wording and the meaning before we begin.

A macrocycle refers to a full training block, which would be a multi-month period focused on a specific end goal and in this case 3 months at a time.

A mesocycle is a multi-week period, this is where key adaptations and a strength quality are programmed over multiple weeks.

A microcycle is a training cycle that involves multiple sessions over a week and involves the structure and distribution of training.  

These time-frames can alter and this is certainly more biased towards general population clients. For example, an Olympian's macrocycle would be 4 years as that’s the time they have to prepare for each Olympics.

Let’s look in to how we can break this down over a year:

Depending on the client, I work in 3 month macrocycles. Which of course means we have 4 macrocycles over a year.

As an example, if your goal was to improve your body composition:

Macrocycle 1- Fat loss phase. Here is where we look at reducing calories into a negative energy balance.

Macrocycles 2 - If the goal is to lose more fat than this could be another fat loss stage. I suggest a little diet break and then drop calories down again.

Macrocycle 3 - Maintenance- You have now reached your fat loss goal, time to sit back and enjoy the results, whilst upping your food intake.

Macrocycle 4 - Hypertrophy stage. Maybe it's now time to add a bit more muscle tissue to improve body composition further. Trying to push your food into a calorie surplus.

This is just an example of a fat loss client and how we can plan for a full year's training but can we can alter it to any individual and goal. The most important thing is you are now planning for long-term periodisation.

Hope this helps to understand more about how you can start planning for the long term.

I always welcome your comments and feedback, and you can always contact me (click here) for more information or if you want help with setting your goals.