Thread by @SebC__

You may think Mourinho is washed.

But he's been the most proeminent figurehead of Tactical Periodization for over 20+ years
That's not atom splitting, most of it is common sense.

But it's a very enjoyable challenge to get around it and implement it.

For sure, his public communication is all but football.

Is it any worse than morons with the "we have the ball we run less we do it the right way" gospel that guillible tacticos swallow?

Press conference mish mash is a shallow exercise of using buzzwords for clout.

Tactical Periodization however, aims at building training weeks between two games.

Working on the three scales that matter:
(1) individual
(2) group level
(3) sum of 1+2 = 3 is the team's outlook (11 a side)

sub-sub principles (1), sub principles (2), principles (3)

#1 SPECIFICITY

Means that any training drill in the week is part of the same "snowflake"❄️
(if you zoom in/out, it's the same pattern. a Fractal)

Behaviour at INDIVIDUAL / GROUP (and TEAM)
have to be consistent in training drills
to make principles of play (TEAM) operational

#2 PRINCIPLES OF PLAY

That's where tácticos create noise.
Anything that goes from Sub-Sub Principles (INDIVIDUAL) and Sub-Principles (GROUP) is UNIVERSAL

An overlap is an overlap, there's no JdP™ overlap.
It answers to individual / group succesful universal criteria

#3 HORIZONTAL ALTERNATION
Track field coachs who pollute football for 60 years with "let's be at peak form for the Olympics in June" can knock themselves out.

The scale is between two games = one week
Work on every muscle group but never the same two days in a row:

#4 SPECIFICITY
It means that if you play 8v8, it's gonna be generic.
If you want to work on something, incentivize BEHAVIOURS with REWARDS (double score) so that something happens more often

Want to work on defending long ball in behind?
➡️Double score for a final third recovery

#4 SPECIFICITY (cont.)
Only opposed training replicates the environment where players need to take decisions under realistic time/space constraints

TARGET team = no constraints (but Laws of Game) to identify/solve a problem
SPARRING team = incentivised to create a game problem

#5 COMPLEX PROGRESSION

This one is fairly straightforward, in terms of going gradually through the stages of acquisition over the season

No need for a 500 slide "GAME MODEL" ceremony
Or hammer players with triple sessions in pre season

#6 PERFORMANCE STABILIZATION
The idea is to have the same framework for training weeks based on the schedule between games
(see the third one when there's two games per week)

And the physical demands (24h 48h 72h for specific muscle groups to recover properly).

#7 TACTICAL FATIGUE & CONCENTRATION
This is one of the most important / overlooked principles

Players train at their RELATIVE maximum ability to absorb information every day.

Because they need to recover mentally from the game which is the most difficult event of the week