Mesocycles Course
Lesson 3: Undulating Periodization
In this video, Mike Tuchscherer is explaining his view on the Undulating Periodization models, particularly Daily Undulating Periodization (DUP).
In short, undulating means non-linear (see below)
Mike differs between two main types of DUP: phase undulations and rep undulations.
With phase undulations, each training day has a specific theme, e.g., Mon: Hypertrophy, Wed: Strength, Fri: Power. Mike talks about few principles behind selecting the particular sequence.
With rep undulations, the reps vary across workouts, e.g., Mon: x10 reps, Wed: x5 reps, Fri: x3 reps.
Mike list maintaining abilities as the main strength of the DUP. The main drawback is the loss of the long term vision (compared to, for example, linear periodization)
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This topic contains 2 replies, has 2 voices, and was last updated by 
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Hi Sir,
can we instead of hypertrophy day put a speed day ? So it would be like: Mon-strength, Wed-power, Fri-speed?
Because i mostly work with team sport players and cant do through season some kind of linear or block periodization, because
want to keep all of the above through season.Thanks in advance,
AleksandarUndulating periodization just means to vary the intensity up and down a cyclic way — Hypertrophy / Strength / Power could easily be Low / Medium / High intensity. Or Low / High / Medium. And then you can validly mix them in different sequences. All that meets the definition of Undulating. But even though it meets that criteria, it will have different effects. Some will work better than others.
Back to your example — you can change the goal of one of the days to speed. It still meets the definition. But that’s no guarantee of anything. It may work, it may not. And I’m sure that’s the real point of focus for you. Based on your experience so far, if it seems like a good idea and like it would be worth a try, then give it a go and measure the results as best you can. I don’t have much intuition on it as I don’t coach in that environment. But I don’t want us to get hung up on categories so much that we lose sight of the goal. The category of Undulating Periodization is useful for teaching a concept. But in the real world, it’s almost always messier than that.
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