The main task of a powerlifter is to improve performance in competitive exercises. Learn the principles of the popular macrocycling theory in powerlifting. The human body should be considered as an adaptive system capable of self-regulation. We can say that a person is a collection of various functions with feedback. The number of different effects on the body is very large and it makes no sense to start listing them.
Many athletes may have noticed that psychological and physiological tones differ on individual days. After a busy day, you can easily set a personal best, while after a few days of rest, sports equipment can be lifted with great difficulty. The reason for these "anomalies" is biological rhythms.
The body has a mechanism that does not make it possible to exhaust all available energy. Scientists distinguish three components of biorhythms:
- Psychological;
- Intellectual;
- Physical.
Since today we are talking about the theory of macrocycling in powerlifting, the psychological as well as the physical components are of the greatest interest to us.
Powerlifters need to improve their squat, bench and deadlift performance. In addition, muscle groups should be developed. To achieve this result, athletes need to adhere to the main principle of training and increase the intensity of training, as well as working weights. At the same time, uncontrolled weight gain can lead to overtraining, the main symptoms of which are:
- Sleep disturbance;
- Loss of appetite
- Increased fatigue;
- Low physical and psychological tone, etc.
The state of overtraining is a kind of signal from the body, saying that the loads are very high. Almost all periodic laws are sinusoidal, including biological rhythms. Their full cycle is on average two weeks. Since the construction of the training process cannot be built according to the law of constantly increasing functions, it can be adjusted to suit your own biorhythms. In this case, the question arises - what to do with the progression of loads? The thing is that the growth of muscle mass is quite enough when each subsequent cycle exceeds the previous one in amplitude.
What is load in macrocycling?
Before talking about the theory of macrocycling in powerlifting and the construction of training cycles, you should decide on the concept of load. To do this, it is necessary to highlight the factors that affect the effectiveness of the training:
- Sports equipment weight;
- The number of sets and repetitions;
- Length of pauses between sets;
- Duration of rest between training sessions;
- Style of execution of movements.
Of course, taking into account all the factors listed above would be the ideal option, but this will complicate everything to a large extent and it is not advisable to do so. Of course, the total weight and the number of repetitions are important, but, for example, when doing squats with a weight of 100 kilograms in ten approaches or 200 kilograms in five approaches, the loads will differ and very significantly.
To create a correct macrocycle, it will be enough to calculate the load using the following formula: P = Mf * N. Here, Mf stands for the mass of the sports projectile, which is multiplied by the significance factor. This indicator, in turn, is calculated as follows - Mf = m * f. N is the total number of repetitions, N = n * s, where n is the number of repetitions, and s is the number of approaches. Thus, we can say with confidence that the weight of the sports equipment, the number of sets and reps are important for powerlifters. For this reason, the macrocycle will be built depending on these indicators. The concept of explosive training tells us that the number of reps for athletes doing them mostly at a fast pace should be in the range from 2 to 8. At the same time, the number of sets should be less than 6.
It is quite clear that training with a large number of repetitions and a mass of a sports equipment of about 70% of the maximum provides a lower load in comparison with two repetitions and close to the maximum weight of a sports equipment. This allows us to conclude that during the local minimum of the entire macrocycle, it is necessary to work with a weight of 70 to 75 percent of the maximum for 6-8 repetitions in 3-5 sets.
The local minimum of the macrocycle in our case is training with 1 or 2 repetitions with the weight of the projectile close to the maximum. Don't expect to be able to put together the right macrocycle that works great right away. This is influenced by a fairly large number of factors, for example, the rate of recovery of the body, the ratio of fast and slow fibers, etc. All these factors are unique and each person has their own. It will take a long time before you put together the correct cycle.
Using the theory of macrocycling in powerlifting, you can make significant progress, but it will take time to put together the right macrocycle. To draw up an accurate macrocycle in the shortest possible time, it is necessary to select a sample of high-level powerlifters (at least CCM) in an amount of about 10 thousand. In this case, an accurate macrocycle schedule can subsequently be drawn up for almost every athlete.
It should also be said that it is very important to correctly compose the macrocycle before the competition. On average, this is about 12 training sessions.
More information on macrocycling in this video:
