A Croatian water polo coach Davorin Golubic

Planning and programming water polo training,

When coach want to make excellent results or if that's expected from him, he must make plan and program of work in that club. Planning is very complicated action where he makes or decides targets and tasks, time cycle and requirement (technical, material, human ... etc) to be done. Here is very important periodization which can be defined like time planing. Programming is other complicated action where, based on planing, coach decides about procedure with information about means, weight and methods of training work and competition.

I think that this organisation chart gives best explanation about macrocycle, mesocycle and microcycle. Those are terms when we speak about planning and programming training and difference is only a time; macrocycle (from 6-12 months - usually 1 season), mesocycle (from 1 to 6 months) and microcycle (from 1 week to 1 month).

When water polo coach makes plan and program for one season he must the difference between preparation period, competition period and active relax period. This preparation period is divided on following subperiods: period of general preparation, period of basic preparation, period of specific water polo preparation and period of precompetition preparation. After that is coming competition period ... etc. It's very important order (or chronology) of these periods. Without right order our planning and programming is not good enough for expected results.

Now I will give you one example about planning and programming water polo training for one water polo season. We will talk about my last season in Germany. First match in season 1999/2000 was at the beggining of November 1999 until middle of December 1999 (7 matches). First break was between middle of December 1999 and middle of January 2000 (almost 4 weeks). Next 13 matches was between middle of January 2000 and beggining of April 2000. Then was again break for 6 weeks (Eastern hollidays and National Teams qualification for Olympic Games 2000 in Sydney). After that was only last two matches and play off or play down games (where my team had possible 2-12 matches).

In this graphic chart symbols are following: numbers- represent months; a- general preparation phase, b- basic preparation phase, c- specific water polo preparation phase, d- precompetition preparation phase; I.- preparation period, II.- competition period and III.- relax period.

I made also one diagram where I want to show you expected relation between work intensivity on training (black line) and team form (red line). You can see that work intensivity were the highest at preparation periods but team form were the lowest at that period. In competition periods (which were my target in training plan and program) form were going up and were the highest at the end of season when we played in play down the most important matches. In that matches we played best in the season and we stay in 1st German division. Plan and program for that season was very good and gives expected results.

More examples about this with much more details will be avaliable very soon, and all will be taken from that Bundesliga season (1999/2000) because they are brilliant example. I'm very proud on my work in that season because I proove my theory in praxis and we made one great results which was no one expected before season.