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Planning training programs for strength–power track and field athletes require an understanding of both training principles and training theory. The training principles are overload, variation, and specificity. Each of these principles must be incorporated into an appropriate system of training. Conceptually, periodization embraces training principles and offers advantages in planning, allowing for logical integration and manipulation of training variables such as exercise selection, intensification, and volume factors. The adaptation and progress of the athlete is to a large extent directly related to the ability of the coach/athlete to create and carry an efficient and efficacious training process. This ability includes: an understanding of how exercises affect physiological and performance adaptation (i.e., maximum force, rate of force development, power, etc .), how to optimize transfer of training effect ensuring that training exercises have maximum potential for carryover to performance, and how to implement programs with variations at appropriate levels (macro, meso, and micro) such that fatigue management is enhanced and performance progress is optimized.

The process of strength–power training and the subsequent adaptation is a multi-factorial process. These factors range from the genetics and morphological characteristics of the athlete to how a coach selects, orders, and doses exercises and loading patterns. Consequently, adaptation from these training factors may largely relate to the mode of delivery, in other words, programming tactics. There is strong evidence that the manner and phases in which training is presented to the athlete can make a profound difference in performance outcome. This discussion deals primarily with block periodization concepts and associated methods of programming for strength–power training within track and field.