To keep this simple, let’s say your training plan included three basic periods- endurance, strength, and speed.
Is it necessary to be training in the same period in all three disciplines at the same time? Is it OK, for example, to be in the strength period on the bike while at the same time in the speed period for the run?
I’m sure you’ll get many better answers, but from a big picture I think for the average MOPer there’s a lot of flexibility in training plans. If one needs those extra seconds to podium, then there should be more attention to detail and precision in he training plan. Every training plan I’ve seen has the 3 sports moving from base->build->peak at the same time.
I can think of one potential problem… Most recommendations for “speed work” I’ve seen (and by speed I’m talking about hard efforts like 4-800m on the track, etc.) have indicated that you want to do about 4-6 weeks max to before training plateaus and you’re simply burning yourself out and risking injury. So if you’re in speed work for the run but not yet for the bike, it would seem that if this discrepancy lasted more than a week or two you’d be doing either too much run speedwork or too little bike speedwork.
I guess the answer might depend on how you’re defining these three periods.
Yes, and it’s advisable to do so in particular circumstances.
can you eloborate?
The obvious example is the swimmer/cyclist/runner on his first 2-3 years of triathlon. Periodization for the sports of which he has no background will be different than for the sport he’s experienced in.
Yes and you can check out my article on Sports Rotation - you can see where I advise backing off two sports to gain endurance in the others. You can use this example for your question too - maybe endurance in one, speed in the other, and strength in the third. And then rotate. When heading toward a big peak, I would advise being more balanced with the workouts being focused on race pace/speed type training.
I hope this helps.