Training Methods: Daily Undulating Periodisation

Often referred to as ‘DUP’, Daily undulating periodisation is a form of training periodisation that is very useful for fatigue management as well as overload and management of the SRA curve (stimulus, recovery, adaptation) and therefore better training predictability.

As previously mentioned, most beginners can get away with linear forms of periodisation, whereas advanced athletes often need to use methods that allow them to manage their fatigue more optimally. This can be done in several ways, one effective method is to implement DUP. To explain it simply, DUP ‘undulates’ the level of intensity of your workouts throughout your week, or more appropriately: your mesocycle, in order to better manage fatigue, and not necessarily be pushing incredibly high RPE/low RIR workouts month after month. We can define DUP as an advanced training strategy, as we are managing varying intensities for each lift on each session, every week.

This form of periodisation allows the athlete/coach to anticipate the level of difficulty/required recovery of workouts and plan to go heavier or lighter accordingly. The ‘high’ workouts need to be followed by a ‘low’ workout (or at least a lowER workout) in order to maintain joint and tendon integrity, whilst becoming more technically proficient and continuing to improve other aspects of training without compromising recovery. One of the main issues with linear periodisation often resides in its incapacity to predict fatigue levels for upcoming sessions, sometimes causing the athlete to fail their reps as generalised fatigue was potentially too high to complete the lift. With DUP, you should almost NEVER fail reps, as you are always managing fatigue according to your programming.

It is worth mentioning here the principle of generalised fatigue; squats do not just ‘fatigue’ the legs, they fatigue the SYSTEM (as do bench and deadlift of course), these heavy lifts need to be taken into account for each subsequent workout: Monday’s squats affect Tuesday’s bench, Thursday’s deadlifts affect Friday’s squats, etc. We can talk of ‘compounding’ fatigue, the fatigue builds and builds to a point where you NEED to recover, whether that be in reduced volume, intensity, or frequency workouts or a full on deload. The alternative to this is that one or multiple lifts will suffer as a result of improper fatigue management.

DUP allows the athlete/coach to have a high frequency programme, whilst keeping intense workouts a staple of each week, by having some workouts as ‘low/lower’ intensity in the week, you can still keep the frequency high, allowing you to keep technical proficiency high and therefore avoid technical decay. The sessions with a longer SRA curve (such as deadlift) should still allow you to get good quality training sessions subsequently without fearing failure.

There are two forms of DUP: advanced (low>medium>high) or alternating (medium>high>medium>low>repeat). The form of DUP selected should be implemented according to the height, weight, level of training experience and strength of the athlete.

The alternating/intermediate form of DUP is more applicable to smaller, shorter athletes or athletes with smaller totals. We will illustrate this with squat sessions, here doing two sessions of squats a week. The level of intensity will generally be in the following order:

• Week 1 Session 1: Medium

• Week 1 Session 2: Low

• Week 2 Session 1: Medium

• Week 2 Session 2: High

• Week 3 session 1: Medium

• Week 3 session 2: Low

This order repeats itself, but as should always be the case with the general principles of overload, W2S1 should be heavier than W1S1, and W3S1 should be heavier than W2S1, here is a chart that may allow you to better understand this form of overload, the blue dots represent each individual session, and the red line allows us to see where the overload occurs from week to week, even if we are only working on a low or medium session:

The other workouts (i.e. bench/deadlift) should be planned accordingly, so where intensity on squats is high, it should most certainly be low on deadlifts, therefore creating a hard deadlift week, followed by a hard squat week. The intensity of bench can to some extent ‘follow’ that of the squat, as in the hard bench workout can be done close to the hard squat workout without causing either to suffer substantially.

Accessory and assistance work should of course be done with synergism in mind. So on squat workouts train anterior leg movements such as front squats and lunges, on bench workouts: pushing and pressing movements, and on deadlift workouts: back and posterior chain movements should be completed. We are potentially looking at doing multiple squat, bench and deadlift workouts a week, but this should be organised according to individual work capacity.

The advanced form of DUP should be implemented for bigger lifters with bigger totals as fatigue levels will be high due to the increased weights, and this advanced form will allow for more recovery, it can also be implemented for individuals who have high levels of general fatigue such as those with long work hours or poor sleeping patterns. This form of DUP is a little more simple following the low>medium>high>low>medium>high pattern, again with the same principles of overload whereby the low>medium>high workouts get heavier each week.

The various lifts again work independently here, so while the squat is on high intensity, the deadlift should be low intensity, the same rules also apply in regards to accessory and assistance lifts.

Whilst DUP is great for fatigue management, there are several drawbacks that come with this form of training. If you are new to lifting, it simply isn’t worth applying DUP, a linear form of periodisation will be more suited in most cases. The second issue with DUP is it’s applicability to non powerlifters, the main focus for DUP is on the big 3 and managing the fatigue that they create, for bodybuilders, strongmen or even olympic lifters, DUP doesn’t account for a lot of the needs of those sports, however, if your primary objective from training is to manage fatigue then the principles of DUP can still be applied in some format to those sports. The third and final problem with DUP is the scale at which it must be applied, by this I mean that you really only get the most from it by implementing it over a long period of time, several mesocycles or even on the macroscale of a year or more, in which case it is very useful.

In conclusion, DUP is a great strategy if you are a powerlifter looking to up your game or even a normal individual with a good amount of training experience looking to manage fatigue whilst consistently improving. It may not be for everyone, but the methods implemented here allow you to have high frequency and regularly hit high intensity on the big 3 and if you programme DUP optimally you can really see dramatic improvements over longer cycles of training.

I highly suggest you check out Juggernaut Training’s Systems for all things DUP, as they explain the matter clearly and concisely, and can give you further knowledge on this form of periodisation.