Ever been stuck in a rut, training-wise? If you’ve been training for any substantial amount of time the answer to that question is invariably “yes”. Sadly, in our quests for greater strength, size, definition, fitness, or any other goal for that matter, our bodies will make every effort to stay the same. But don’t be too mad, it’s this ‘homeostasis’ which keeps us alive.
A basic homeostatic control mechanism consists of three parts: A receptor to detect a stimulus, a control centre to process the stimulus and check whether the deviation from normal levels is high enough to warrant a response, and an effector to carry out that response if needed.
Things like blood glucose levels are controlled in this way, as well as many other important physiological processes. Unfortunately, while controlling blood glucose levels is all fine and dandy, when the body applies this mechanism to hinder our athletic goals – it’s not so helpful.
The truth of the matter is that your body’s overriding purpose is to stay alive, and it really doesn’t want to be expending huge amounts of energy on building muscle unless it absolutely has to (i.e.- if it needs that muscle to survive!).
To stop this from happening, your body will adapt to even strenuous exercise if the same stimulus is presented to it time after time. It may take days, it may take months, but eventually your body will cotton on, and laugh triumphantly at your folly.
This is where periodization comes in.
What is periodization?
Periodization is the answer to your problems and a critical element in the design of any training program. In a sentence, periodization is the planned variation of training variables over the duration of a training cycle in order to reach a specific goal.
Bit of a mouthful, but that’s a pretty succinct definition of what periodization is all about. Most people know to “change it up” a bit every now and again, but often they’re not sure of - or just oblivious to - what they need to change in order to see progress.
If you’re one of the people changing their programs every 8 weeks or so you’re ahed of the curve, but if you’re just changing from 3x12 to 3x10, or changing bench press to incline bench press, or instead of doing a Push/Pull/Legs split you do Push/Legs/Pull…well that aint gonna cut it.
The key word here is ‘planned’. Periodization needs to be focused, detailed, and geared towards a particular aim or goal you want to accomplish with that program. I log every single one of my workouts in a workout journal in minute detail. Using this information I can plan my next program so that it’s drastically different to the last, as well as varied throughout its own lifespan.
Now that’s enough waffle, let’s get into the meat and potatoes of just how to periodize your own training programs.
The Training Variables
There are probably more training variables than you expect, heck, there are more than I expect and I’m writing this article. The best thing about this part of designing a training program is that, in my opinion, it is almost a mix between art and science. You can know the science, but this is where you can get really creative with what you’re doing.
This is by no means an exhaustive list, I’ve even put programs together in the past which create new variables (Mid-set rest intervals anyone? Oh dear…) but this should give you some idea of just what you can do:
Exercises – Seems basic, I know, but we often leave this point out when we find a set of exercises we like. This is actually a very good variable to change, as few things are as difficult as learning completely new movement patterns. It’ll take a fair bit of concentration, and will use your muscles in a new way which is obviously what we want.
With that said, try to keep a little consistency. Don’t change your exercises with every workout, or you’ll never be able to tell whether you’re improving! Finding the correct weight will also be a nightmare, perhaps making your workouts either too easy or impossibly hard.
Rep Range – Simply the number of sets and reps you’re performing for each exercise in your workout. Usually notated as “Sets X Reps” or something similar, this is another variable that should be changed far more often than it actually is for most people. It seems like everybody sticks to three sets of eight or twelve reps and do nothing else in years of lifting.
This is one of those variables that the human body seems very good at adapting to, so it’s a good idea to change your set/rep scheme at least with every program – preferably even several times within a single program!
It can be important to choose a rep range which suits your goals, such as lower reps for strength training (3-4 x 3-5), higher reps for muscular endurance (2-3 x 14-20), and a compromise between the two for hypertrophy (3-4 x 8-12).
Bear in mind, though, that these rep ranges are not set in stone. It’s just as possible to gain muscle mass using low (3-6 reps), moderate (8-12), and high (14-20+) reps. I have used all three in certain ways to increase strength, and have done things such as 10 x 3 for power, speed, and muscular endurance under those conditions.
Yes, it’s often the variation that matters! You’ll find that after doing some other rep range for a while, the relevant one works better when you go back to it!
Rest Interval – The rest interval is the time between sets where no exercise is performed, and is a sadly neglected variable. Even I am guilty of forgetting about this at times, but increasing or decreasing the rest interval can have a profound effect on how easy or difficult the preceding sets are.
Intensity – For the intents and purposes of periodization, intensity isn’t an arbitary description of how difficult a workout was (“that was intense, bro!”) but rather a rating of how heavy a load is in comparison to your one-rep maximum weight. This can be expressed as either a percentage (80% of 1RM) or as a rep maximum for a particular number of reps (6RM, 12RM, etc).
Personally, I prefer the latter method, as it’s slightly easier to gauge against the number of reps. For example, an eight rep set at your twelve rep maximum (written as 1x8 @ 12RM) wouldn’t be very intense. If your 12RM is the absolute maximum weight you can lift for twelve reps, then using this weight for eight reps isn’t much of a challenge.
Conversely, an eight rep set with your 8RM (1x8 @ 8RM) would be very intense, and you would go very close to concentric failure on the last rep, and be completely unable to perform a ninth rep at the end of the set. This is because it is the maximum weight you can handle for eight reps!
Most “regular” intensity sets are performed with a weight with an RM value just outside the number of reps you are doing (1x8 @ 9-10RM for example). This makes the set a challenge rather than a struggle which compromises your ability to perform a rep with clean form.
Varying intensity can serve such purposes as a “warmup” or “unload” phase/set at a low intensity (1x8 @ 12RM), or to ramp up the weight towards a record attempt (1x8 @ 12RM, 1x8 @ 10RM, 1x8 @ 8RM – Record attempt set).
Intensity is invaluable for calculating estimates of which weights you should be able to lift at different rep ranges, or for what your next record weight should be.
Volume – The total volume of a workout is the total number of exercises/sets/reps that will be performed in that particular workout. All three should be taken into account and can be varied in a number of different ways.
For example, higher intensity strength sessions will generally have less volume, whereas lower intensity workouts for muscular endurance or work capacity will have more volume. Hypertrophy training generally strikes a balance between the need for mechanical work (performing enough repetitions) and increased load (higher weights) in order to promote muscle growth.
Some typical values for training programs I personally perform would be in the range of 15-22 sets over 4-6 exercises per session. Depending on the kind of program however, it could be lower or higher than these values.
Frequency – This refers to how often you train throughout a certain period of time, usually a week. It’s an important variable to consider when changing volume or intensity for your workouts, as the increased stress of those individual training sessions may require you to train less often in order to leave ample recovery time.
Typical frequency would be in the range of 2-4 times a week. Never underestimate the importance of recovery time/rest days between workouts, as not enough could shorten your program by a good few weeks if you are severely over-reaching/over-training.
Managing frequency comes with experience, knowing what your own body can handle at that particular time, and how to manage the other training variables. As a rule of thumb – the more frequent your training sessions, the less each training session should contain.
Split – A training split is an element of the overall program which describes how the exercises to be performed are divided between the total training days, and also what particular style of training would be occurring that day (strength, power, unilateral, cardio).
The split is given a lot more credit than it’s due by the majority of trainees, but the truth of the matter is that you can split up a program however you can think of, but if the other variables such as volume, intensity, and the amount of rest are poorly set up, the split will not help this.
Splits should focus on dividing exercises up in terms of kinetic chains and movement patterns rather than body-parts to promote maximum efficiency and decrease the risk of overtraining. The split is a good way of getting similar work completed at the same time to make the most of your rest days.
Some example splits are: Push/Pull/Legs, Upper/Lower, Fullbody, Unilateral/Bilateral, Vertical Plane/Horizontal Plane, and any other way you can think of!
Density – Density refers to the amount of work done in a set time limit. A pretty advanced variable, density can be manipulated by timing your workouts to the second each time you visit the gym and instead of trying to increase the weight you are lifting, increase the volume making sure you still abide by the time limit.
High density/low density workout days could also be implemented as a form of periodization.
Hopefully my descriptions were detailed enough to give you a clear idea of what each variable means, but vague enough to make you actually think about what you’re doing. Just be creative, there’s enough in that small list to make a thousand different programs if you take the time to put something interesting together.
Remember, there is no such thing as a cookie-cutter training program – your program should be tailored to you, in order to improve your strengths and address your weaknesses. Never undertake a training regimen “out-of-the-box”.
Until Next Time…
Well hopefully that’s given you at least a general idea of what periodization is. For now, the next time you’re looking to start a new training program, look at the last one you did and change as many things as possible.
In the next few articles, rather than just changing things for the sake of the change itself, we’ll look at some specific types of periodization and how to set up tailored plans to maximise the effects of a constantly varying stimulus over a single program in order to arrive at a set goal at the end of that training cycle (and with a sentence like that, you just know stuff’s gonna happen).
Until then train hard, train safe, and train different.
-Gaz
Linear Mode
