Successful planning in sports is very complex. It is far more than putting down some drills or goals for one practice or one match. Or even for one season. When we are talking about this subject, it is very important to say that there are 3 main types of planning:

 

• Long term planning

• Medium term planning and

• Short term planning

 

Before I write about each of this 3 types it is very important to say that successful planning in sport is very complex field and that final success is determine with:

 

• Determined desired condition in accordance with volleyball demands of our team, and realistic possibilities that we can achieve desired results in specific period of time,

• Determined starting condition of characteristics, abilities and knowledge of our athletes and our team, and

• Testing of our plan and adjusting under influence of new information that we received back from our athletes and teams, during period of time that we spend in working with team

 

Long term planning includes:

 

• Perspective planning ( Entire volleyball career), and

• Two-Olympic planning (Period of 8 years)

 

Medium term planning includes:

 

• Olympic cycle planning (4 year planning), and

• Double two year cycle

 

Short term planning includes:

 

• Macro cycle (1 year or 6 months) of training, and

• Macro cyclic phases of training

 

Since College sport is 4 year cycle, I will write more detailed about medium term planning and especially later on about short term planning.

 

Medium term planning

 

Olympic cycle planning

 

Olympic cycle planning needs to consist of only basic information that we can rely on while working with our team. In that way we can create yearly cycle’s at most optimal way possible. This information could be:

 

• Short anthropological characteristics of group or individual based on diagnosis,

• Main projections, goals and basic tasks of multi-year practices,

• Construction of macro cycle (1 year plan) with its duration and contents,

• Main competitions in macro cycles,

• Schedule of practices, rest and competition in every macro cycle,

• Main team goals and their schedule in every macro cycle,

• Tentative intensity and extensity of workload in practice,

• Testing norms in macro cycles and tentative results, etc

 

Double Two-year cycle

 

Two year cycle is consisting of planning that can be done within 2 year period all together or for each year separately.

 

• In first two years  accent of work is at working on basic functional and motor preparedness  and mastering of technical and tactical knowledge to the level of automatism,

• In third year dominant area of work should be construction and conceptualization of situational model in structuring training and system of competition in Olympic year,

• In forth year we should be working with existing model that we already successfully created in previous year, with necessary adjustments that will insure that our team will be at highest level of play at most important competition – Olympic year.

 

Success of medium term planning is connected with realistic planning of goals (results), with adjusting of goals rationally, with intensity and extensity of workload, control testing etc.

Every period of yearly cycle must be started and finished at higher level of training workload then period before. At that ways we are making sure that there is continuity of proper workload from year to year and increase of our levels in just few years. It is normal that, during that time, we have periods of time when we need to increase and decrease of workload intensity, but we need to be exact as we can in planning those periods in our yearly planning. In order to be accurate in these planning it is important to do constant testing so we always know current and potential levels of ability of our athletes and their fatigue.

In framework of multiyear perspective planning, elaboration of single year goals and tasks is absolutely necessary. Contents of that elaboration need to consist of more detailed determination of goals and tasks, training workloads, competitions, achieving desired results etc…

Therefore, we can say, once we successfully created all of ours medium terms planning, short term planning represent most important aspect in our work with teams.

 

 

Short term planning

 

• Macro cycle ( 1 year or 6 months) of training, and

• Macro cyclic phases of training

 

Macro cycle of training needs to be based on structure of practices and basic rules of it, in accordance with rules of achieving sport form (peaking), timing of it and maintain it.

In framework of one macro cycle we need to establish:

 

• Based on sport specification equation we need to determine desired condition of athletes (team),

• With proper diagnosis we need to establish starting level of all primary attributes, characteristics and abilities of our athletes and compare it with desired (final) condition,

• With analysis of practices, rest and competition from last year determine errors and faults,

• Based on diagnosis, analysis of previous work and model of desired level, determine main goals and directions that will be expected from our athletes in season,

• Forming final structure of training cycles (monthly, weekly and daily), duration of cycles, number of peaking during season and when they need to go down or up, extensity and intensity of workload in those cycles, methods and resources for recovery…

• Based on system and calendar of competition make individual calendar of competition(plan) with highlighting most important matches and periods,

• Determine implementation of control and testing of athletes with goal to check current levels and eventually making corrections and adjusting in future

 

Macro cyclic phases of training are:

 

• Pre season ( Preparatory period)

• Season ( Period of competition) and,

• Post Season ( Transitional period)

 

Periods of training (season) and its lasting will depend from calendar of competition so it’s important to determine:

 

• Construction of weekly cycles ( duration of 3-6 weeks), determine amount of them, projections and goals and tasks,

• Volume, structure and nature of resources (basic and specific) of practice, workload increase (extensity and intensity), and proper method of training.