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It is a very common misconception that an athlete should be at Peak Fitness all the time. In fact it is impossible to be at peak fitness all the time as this would without any doubt lead to over training and injury.
Your level of condition should gradually rise over a period of weeks, stabalise for a period and then decline for a brief period. This sequence is then repeated over a number of cycles, at the end of each cycle you should be reaching a peak fitness, higher than the previous cycle.
You should aim to be at peak fitness for a tournament or competition, if your art does not involve competition then aim to be at peak fitness for a grading or another event that is important to your organisation.
If you are trying to maintain a constant level of conditioning over extended periods of time, then this means that you cannot be at peak fitness. Just think about it for a second, peak fitness is exactly what it says. You reach a point or a crest for a short time and then come down again.
Picture a graph, with a line that goes up at an angle, reaches a point and then comes down a little. The line starts to go up at an angle again and then comes down a little, this cycle continues.
Reaching Peak Fitness is a planned cycle, it doesn’t just happen.
The length of time to reach peak fitness can vary over any period you want to set but it will still go through a preparatory period of improving weak areas and high volume conditioning. Then it’s the competitive period where workload is decreased but training much more specific to your Art are carried out, such as grappling, sparring, match techniques, tactics and strategies.
The time to reach peak fitness will obviously be much shorter for someone who is in good shape and possesses high skill levels in the art.
As always - Train Smart, Fightwize!
Tags: Peak Fitness
This entry was posted
on Thursday, July 31st, 2008 at 8:52 pm and is filed under Combat Fitness.
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