The Highland Games Annual Plan
For Highland Games, You Need a Plan!
We’ve all heard that quote from Ben Franklin that goes something like, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.”
I love that quote, but you don’t get the feel of it until you actually define what “failing” means. How exactly am I failing when I don’t have a plan?
When it comes to the competitive Highland Games athlete, failure is stagnation. Failing to plan results in competing year after year without getting any better, or worse yet… your performance actually declines.
There are times of the year when different aspects of your training need to get prioritized. During the offseason, you want to be getting as strong as possible, and as you’re building up for a competition you want to be peaking your explosiveness.
On top of all of that, we have to remember that you’re a thrower and that throwing volumes have to be accounted for in the overall plan.
An annual plan is key to making sure that you get better each and every year at your biggest competitions.
The Duck and Cover Highland Games Program operates on just such an annual plan, keeping the entire year in perspective as each individual week is published. In this article, we outline that annual plan and all of the reasoning behind it.
Offseason Training vs In-Season Training
Every region is different, but every year each area has the iconic competitions that athletes are flocking to. ATR is located in Cheyenne, WY, and around here those big competitions are the Celtic Bison Highland Games here in Cheyenne in June and the Longs Peak Scottish-Irish Highland Festival in Estes Park in September.
They happen at the same time each year, and that means we can build the annual plan around being at our best on these days specifically. We don’t have to be able to throw our personal best in January, so we can dial back the throw practice and spend more time in the gym getting stronger!
This is the basic logic behind a divide between the Offseason and the Inseason. Breaking up the year distinctly into two separate categories lets us really conceptualize our priorities and make hard changes to the way that we train.
During the offseason, we can get more time in the weight room building up the qualities that will eventually become bigger throws on the field. It also offers us a mental break from the strain of frequent throwing practice.
During the inseason, we prioritize throw practice and throw volume. We scale back in the gym to ensure that each athlete is fresh for practice. The loads are meant to maintain all of the new adaptations we made in the offseason while we get better at the individual events in the Highland Games.
In both the Offseason and the Inseason, Duck and Cover breaks the year down one step further into subcategories.
Offseason: Pre Season
The pre-season is the longest training phase of the year, and it is where our sole focus is on building a bigger and better machine for throwing.
This is when we focus on slapping muscle onto your frame. It grows raw and untrained, ready for us to develop during the in season training before a competition.
During this phase of training, we are spending as much time in the weight room as we ever will, sacrificing throwing time. Consequently, throwing volumes should be at their lowest.
Your throwing practices should be short in their duration, and focused drills designed to attack your specific weaknesses. Don’t worry about hitting a ton of the competition throws. Take this opportunity to work very specifically on your biggest problems.
For Duck and Cover specifically, the Pre Season consists of two training cycles, progressing through relatively longer accumulation phases into transmutation and peaking phases. These transmutation and peaking phases stay heavier than they do during the In-season.
There is a scheduled opportunity to test throws, but I recommend that this be used only to plan throwing practices for the In-season. There is no reason why you should be throwing at your best at this point in the annual plan.
In contrast, you should be seeing your biggest numbers out of the weight room. After two hard training cycles focused on size and strength, this is the time in your annual plan when you should be the strongest you’ve ever been!
Offseason: Post Season
This season begins with the end of the competition season. Athletes should be coming out of their biggest contest of the year, enthused by their successes and possibly frustrated with some aspects of their performance.
At this point, the athlete’s training has to be kept in context. Whether they're happy with the season or not, they’ve just ended a long season of training, throwing, and competing. They will definitely need a break.
The Post Season keeps the volume in the weight room Low to Moderate, with the volume escalating slowly over the course of the training phase. The idea here is to give all the athletes an opportunity to recover before hammering them with overly stressful loads again.
Throwing volumes also stay Low to Moderate. Avoiding burnout requires us to have times in the annual plan where there is little to no work done with the actual competition exercise. The Post Season is a good time to give the brain a break from the deep focus required in throwing.
The Post Season is one training cycle, with a relatively long accumulation phase when compared to In-season training. There is testing in both the weight room and on the field, but largely it is just to give us a benchmark to determine how much we improved during the Preseason.
In-season: 1st Competition Prep
The first competition of the season isn’t the big one. In my eyes, it’s a preparatory competition. We go to knock the rust off and get throws in with the magic of the competition atmosphere surrounding us.
You can certainly go into this competition looking for personal bests in your throws, but that shouldn’t be the expectation. We’re looking to gauge whether or not what we’re doing in practice is working.
This competition should give you a lot of important information that you can then use to organize your throwing practice for your 2nd Competition Prep.
During this phase of training, the volume drops in the weight room to somewhere between Low and Moderate. The goal is to maintain all of the gains you made during the Offseason and make sure that they carry through to benefit you in the 2nd Competition.
Maintenance doesn’t require as much volume as building does, and that allows you to significantly increase the throwing volumes without negatively impacting your recovery. Once the In-season starts, your priorities need to shift away from the weights and towards throw practice.
In the Duck and Cover annual plan, this phase of training lasts for one full training cycle with relatively longer transmutation and peaking phases than the offseason cycles.
In-Season: 2nd Competition Prep
From the first to the second competition, not a lot changes regarding the training load. You’re going to see low to moderate volumes in the weight room, while working hard on your throws out in the field.
The goal here is to take the information you’ve derived from your first contest and apply to the prep for your second. The bulk of the work and focus here should be on designing your throw program for the biggest contest of the year.
The exercises that we prescribe for you to do in the weight room should be familiar, and easy to perform. The brain only has so much capacity for intense thought, and scrutinizing your lifts shouldn’t be your primary focus. You need to save that for throw practice.
The Duck and Cover annual has one training cycle between the first and second competitions still emphasizing the transmutation and peaking phases.
The expectation is that you’re throwing volumes are at their highest of the year and that you’re putting in very limited time in the weight room. The training sessions are short to make sure they don’t get in the way of what is really important to a Highland Games Athlete: Throw Practice.
Individual Difference and Deviation From the Plan
Duck and Cover is a program that is available to anyone with a smartphone and the TrainHeroic mobile app. The problem is that not everyone is going to be competing in the Celtic Bison, nor will they all be competing in the Games at Estes Park.
For athletes that are planning to compete in more than just two games in a year, I recommend that you pick a couple of big ones that are going to be your primary focus for the year.
As a beginner, competing frequently can offer invaluable experience as you get exposed to the competitive environment and meet a ton of experienced throwers. I still recommend that as you age in the sport you start to identify specific contests that you train for more seriously.
Trying to peak for too many competitions in a season will leave you chasing your tail. It’s perfectly fine to compete more often than just twice a year, but those two contests should be where you expect to go for your biggest throws.
For athletes whose primary contests are not the Celtic Bison and Estes Park, Duck and Cover might not be peaking you at the right time to be successful! This is where the program needs some flexibility.
For those who peak at different times of the year, small tweaks to the overall annual plan can be made and published to you in the form of a Custom Program. As a subscriber to Duck and Cover, this does not cost you anything extra. Just message the coach in the app with your specific situation and it’ll get taken care of.
Exercise Selection and Testing
There are accumulation, transmutation, and peaking phases built into Duck and Cover for each section of the year. We have to pick exercises that fulfill two major requirements:
The exercises we pick have to directly transfer to success in the Highland Games.
The exercises we pick have to support the adaptation we’re shooting for during the training phase.
During the Offseason, we’re going to be primarily focused on making you a bigger, faster, and stronger athlete. That means the big exercises are going to be the focus.
Heavy squats, presses, and pulls are going to be the bulk of your training volume with all of the mobility work necessary to support it and keep you healthy.
During the In-Season we’re going to be primarily focused on perfecting your throwing technique and developing the power you’ll need to set personal records at the Games.
Exercise variations are going to be focused on making you move with high speed and high force under load. Unique protocols designed to make you as explosive as possible are going to take a lot more of the training time.
I’ve built in testing periods for your big lifts at different times in the Annual Plan. That means that you’ll set 1RM’s in different exercises throughout the year to measure progress, plus perform testing protocols to see how you’re progressing outside of just your absolute strength.
The ultimate test is going to be your throwing, and the grade should be given under two different criteria.
The first is the nature of your throwing practices. If you’re adhering well to Duck and Cover, you should notice that your practices are more productive and efficient.
The strength that you’re gaining from the program should allow you to execute your technique better, and practice longer without significant fatigue.
The second criterion is your actual competition performance. If you’re completing your workouts you should see higher and farther throws than ever before.
Assuming that you don’t completely neglect your throwing practice, your current technique with added strength and explosiveness should help you to new personal bests.
Conclusion
If you’re looking to see next-level success in the Highland Games, you’re going to need to plan out your training year.
Without an annual plan, you run the risk of too much specificity or too much training volume at the wrong times of the year.
The Duck and Cover Highland Games Programming breaks up the year into an Offseason and an In-Season, focusing on two of the biggest games during the year to allow for better peaking.
The Offseason is broken up into the Post-Season and the Pre-Season.
The Post-Season is all about giving athletes a mental break while keeping strength levels high and maintaining technique.
The Pre-Season is all about making the athlete as strong as possible, and sending them into the competitive season ready to train hard and throw far.
The In-Season is broken up into two phases as well.
The first phase is the preparation for the first competition of the season. This competition is in the plan to knock the dust off and get a competition experience under the belt.
The second phase is the preparation for the second and biggest competition of the season. This one is for all the marbles and is where we plan to have our biggest and best throws of the year.
If you’re not peaking for the competitions that Duck and Cover is peaking for, then you’re going to need modifications to be successful.
This comes to you at no added cost. Shoot your coach a message and we’ll get things moved around to ensure you’re prepared.
There is testing built into the programming throughout the year so that you can see your strength levels improving, but you need to make sure that the ultimate test of the program’s success is your throwing.
You’re a thrower, so you should notice that throw practices are more efficient and effective with Duck and Cover. You should also note that you’re stronger in your current technique and your throws are going higher and farther.