Emergence Cycles, Part 1: Description and Application

I’ve written before about the concepts of self-contained programming and bottoms-up management. What follows is an elucidation on one of the methods I use to make this happen.

I’ve never actually sat down and written it out – I follow tacit heuristics when coaching my clients. But, I’ve recently begun mentoring other coaches (contact me if you’re interested!), and thus have found cause to reverse engineer my own processes so that I can effectively articulate and teach them. Hence, I introduce: emergence cycles.

For today, I’m not going to talk about the theory behind emergence cycles. I just want to explain what it is, introduce some key terms, and show what one might look like in practice.

What is an Emergence Cycle?

  1. Test a metric

  2. Select an initial workout based on/designed to improve that metric

  3. Repeat that workout until some number X of failures to improve (call this number FTIx)

  4. Switch to a transition workout

  5. Perform that workout until either the athlete fails to improve once, or they reach the number of workouts prior to failure with the initial workout (call this exposures to failure, or ETF)

  6. Retest the metric

The idea here is that rather than imposing a progression on the athlete from above, we let a natural rate of progression emerge from below. Of course, this requires appropriate prescription of stress to induce adaptation, as well as sufficient understanding on the athlete’s part of their own role (i.e. they have to know what they’re supposed to be doing from workout to workout.)

Certain features of the emergence cycle need to be designed ahead of time. These features serve to contextualize the information as it emerges, and provide protocols for moving forward within the cycle. Those features include at least:

  • The chosen metric (duh)

  • The initial workout

  • The transition workout

  • The number of failures to improve on the initial workout prior to transitioning (this is FTIx)

Depending on the circumstances, there are at least three other types of protocols that might be involved:

  • Pre-Exposures: If the selected metric is sufficiently different from what the athlete has been doing in training, it may make sense to do 1-3 pre-exposure workouts to prepare the athlete for the assessment

  • Pivot Cycles: Have a plan for what the athlete will do between emergence cycles. Often it should be something totally different (e.g. if an athlete has been training for a 5k row, have them row instead.)

  • Support Workouts: These are workouts designed to support the training done in the primary workout. For example, if the primary metric is a 5RM back squat, then a second workout of safety bar squats might be your support workout

Let’s talk a bit about some of the terms above.

FTIx: This is the number of times an athlete will be allowed to not improve on the initial workout before switching to the transition workout. E.g. if you decide that FTIx = 2, that means that once the athlete fails to make an improvement twice in a row, they would transition.

How do you decide on what FTIx is?

The first time an athlete uses a particular metric for an emergence cycle, FTIx = 2. The reason is that sometimes an athlete will fail to improve after several exposures, only to improve again on the following exposure. By setting the initial FTIx to 2, we leave a margin for “error”, letting the athlete continue to progress if they are able. If this happens, the athlete should continue with the initial workout until they fail to improve ONE more time.

It’s possible that in any given case it makes sense to continue even beyond an initial failure, but that would be contingent on the coach’s understanding of the particular athlete. This is a big part of the value of the emergence cycle approach: by tracking the right features of the emergence cycle, a picture of how the athlete responds to training will begin to come together. This will make it possible to design more effective emergence cycles in the future, as well as contributing to the design of other sorts of training cycles.

What do you do at the end of the emergence cycle?

The athlete moves into their pivot cycle, and during this time the coach and athlete need to make a decision. Do we:

  • Select a new metric and design a new emergence cycle

  • Continue with the same metric

The decision should be based on a number of factors, including but not limited to:

  • How much progress did the athlete make? How did it compare to expectations?

  • How many consecutive emergence cycles has the athlete performed with this metric? How has the rate of progress been impacted?

  • What is the athlete’s mindset with regard to the metric? Are they feeling invigorated and eager to keep improving, or do they need a change?

  • Does the athlete have any events on the schedule that we need to plan for?

Here’s a hypothetical example of how an emergence cycle might play out. Assume a one week microcycle, so that each exposure = one week of real time.

Metric: 5000m Row

Pre-Exposure: 2x3000m @ 7-8/1:00 Rest, repeated for two exposures

Assessment: 20:00 (2:00/500m)

Initial: 20x500m Row/0:30 Rest. Athlete is instructed to perform the first workout close around their 5k pace, going a little faster if they feel good, a little slower if not.

  • Workout 1: Average 500m split of 1:59

  • Workout 2: Average 500m split of 1:58

  • Workout 3: Average 500m split of 1:57.5

  • Workout 4: Average 500m split of 1:57.5 (first FTI)

  • Workout 5: Average 500m split of 1:58 (second FTI, also have reached FTIx

Transition: 10x1000m Row/0:30 Rest.

Athlete is instructed to perform the first workout close around their 5k pace, going a little faster if they feel good, a little slower if not.

  • Workout 1: Average 500m split of 1:58.5

  • Workout 2: Average 500m split of 1:57.5

  • Workout 3: Average 500m split of 1:57

Assessment: 19:40 (1:58/500m)