Building the Program: System Organization
Foundations III: Training Organization
We’ve laid out the Evergreen Training Principles—Consistency, Variability, Progression, and Adaptability. And we’ve defined the goals: to perform Better Actions, More Often, and For Longer across a wide spectrum of athletic demands.
Now it’s time to talk about how we organize training to achieve those goals.
Why “Organization” Instead of “Periodization”?
Because most people outside the sport science world don’t use the word periodization. And even for those who do, it often creates more confusion than clarity.
We’re after simplicity and clarity. Everyone understands what it means to organize. So that’s the word we’re using.
So What Are We Organizing?
We’re organizing how and when to train the physical qualities outlined in Foundations II: strength, power, hypertrophy, mobility, energy systems, etc.
If you Google “periodization,” you’ll find terms like Linear, Conjugate, Concurrent, and Block. Each represents a different way to arrange training. And each expert will define them slightly differently.
To simplify, we can group these into two broad categories:
Organization Type #1: Single-Quality Focus
A given training cycle (week, month, or block) is built around developing one primary quality. For example, 4 weeks focused solely on max strength.
Organization Type #2: Multi-Quality Development
Multiple qualities are trained throughout the week or cycle. A single week might include strength, power, hypertrophy, aerobic and anaerobic work, and mobility.
How Does Evergreen Train?
We use Multi-Quality Development.
Why?
Because Principle #1: Consistency. If you don’t use it, you lose it. And age accelerates this truth. After 35, aging naturally reduces your ability to hold onto qualities like power, strength, muscle mass, mobility, and work capacity.
So we train them all.
Every. Single. Week.
You’ll see some form of strength, power, hypertrophy, energy system work, and movement quality consistently programmed into each week, month, and phase of Evergreen training.
And Principle #4: Adaptability
You’re not a full-time athlete. You’re a full-time human—with a job, a family, obligations, and surprises.
So we build systems that hold up when life gets messy.
By training multiple qualities each week, missing one workout doesn’t mean you miss an important chunk of volume. You simply miss a little volume across the board—and keep moving forward.
Another Brick Laid
With our Principles, Goals, and Organization defined, we’ve built the core structure of Evergreen Performance.
In Foundations IV, we’ll dig into the final layer—how we structure a single week of training and lay the groundwork for selecting the right exercises, sets, reps, and more.
Onward.