Regardless what sport we work with it is often our goal as coaches to try and determine athlete readiness for competitions. Many of us coaches understand that in a sport like track and field there will be meets and possibly many meets where our athletes will not be at peak performance or even ready to throw a respectable distance in comparison to their personal bests. This is normally planned for because the ultimate goal is to throw far, jump high, and run fast at the big meets like the conference championships, regionals, and finals. Planning like this can be called periodization or as Coach Gambetta refers to it as planned performance training. Read more