Preparative period

This period is in science literature also called basic period. This name is not good for use, cause for example competitive period is basic for somebody, and for other preparation period. So the name preparative period is significantly more suitable, and name on itself talks about the essence of this period – athlete preparation. Athlete prepares himself for successful match in competitive period by creating necessary motoric, functional, technic-tactic, psychological and other terms for successful match. In many sports branches preparative period is the period that lasts the longest. Of course, that is not the rule, cause there are numerous factors that determine period lasting in macrocycle:

-          sports branch specificity

-          stage of the many years preparation in which macrocycle is found with its periods

-          individual morphological and functional athlete features

-          previous training features

-          individual and team competition calendar

-          competition number and level

-          lasting of the phase of most important competitions

-          climate conditions

-          material – technic conditions

Following the older training teories, first part of preparative period should have emphasize on basic physical tactic and technic development, and other part should be specific preparation. This is justified only in the case that athlete is not well prepared, so it is necessary to develop its muscles and functional systems first. In all other cases, by modern theories, multiple training assignments are solved during the whole preparative period. On this complex access growth or athlete level will not have any influence. However, exercises of specific direction dominate in training. Other words, all types of training are always solved, but some of them, in some phases, have priority.

Usually preparative period is divided into two phases:

a)      basic-preparation

b)     specific-preparation.

Basic-preparation phase

In this phase is primarily worked on raising of basic preparation level, technic-tactic skills spreading, error correction in already adopted skills, increase in theory knowledges, athlete motivation for hard training etc. Training assignments are solved relatively independent. For example, it is separately worked on physical preparation and tactic preparation. Development of specific skills in the circle of physical preparation is also relatively mutually independant. Lots of exercises can by its character and structure be very differented from competitive exercise. Parallely with work of basic character flows specific preparation, but it is in the first part of this phase unimportant. One of features of this phase, and whole preparative period, is gradual increase of training specificity. On the beginning of the phase load is smaller and in its volume dominates over the training intensity. Along with basic-preparative and specific-preparative drills, in lesser volume competitive exercises are applied, too. This phase is longer for beginner, and shorter for top athlete.

Specific-preparative phase

In this phase specific preparation is significantly applied. Volume, intensity, structure and content of training is changed. Significance of specific-preparative and competitive drills is increasing. Training intensity is increased more and more along with maintaining of relatively big summary training volumes. Specific physical preparation is more and more related for technical-tactical trainings, and also competition itself. Whole preparation is oriented on competitive prepareness maintenance. Along with that, influence of competitive drills is increasing, cause necessarily in the end of this period athlete has to be taken into sports form, which means high level of physical, technical-tactical and psychological trainness and their harmonic relationship. Competitive drills are non-properly distributed – its number is increased in the end of this phase. Number of competitions varies from sports branch features. In sport branches type endurance, competition number is significantly smaller than, for example, sport games.

Specific-preparative phase is longer for top athlete, and shorter for beginner.

In sports games, preparative period is divided into three phases:

1)      basic preparation phase

2)      specific preparation phase

3)      integral preparation phase

Basically, related to classic share, there are no significant differences. Contents and features of preparative period remain same. Also, transition between phases is not emphasized, cause borders among them don’t exist – phases are overrun into each other. Division into three phases is suitable due to emphasizing of basic training direction and dominant devices emphasizing. In first phase basic-preparative drills are dominant, and in the second one specific-preparative drills, and the third are competitive drills. Preparation is done by “funnel principle”, cause with closing of competitive period is more and more specific.

"Basics of sports training", Vladimir Koprivica