How to Guarantee Results Period!
By utilising periodisation in your training programs you will be able to achieve continuous muscle gain without plateauing or going backwards. Today I’m going to show you how!
We humans, are creatures of habit. We like doing what we know, things that are familiar and things that we are comfortable with. Which is why so many of us spend our time at the gym doing the same exercises over an over and over again… Eg. Monday “International Chest Day” If I had a dollar for every guy in a gym doing chest on Mondays I could retire on Tuesday and live quite happily for the rest of my days.. Bench Press, Incline Press, Bar Bell, Dumbbell & the Pec Deck maybe occasionally some cable work.. That is generally the routine of literally thousands if not hundreds of guys around the world. They’ll all do 8-12 reps and 4 sets on each because that’s what bodybuilding.com told them it ‘was good to increase muscle size’.
If you’re one of those guys don’t worry it’s not the end of the world, especially if you’re new to the gym. As you will more than likely see some good results both in terms of your strength and muscle mass gains, because the stimulus is new to your body. However it is a bad idea to keep doing after you’ve experience the initial gains, especially if building lean muscle mass is your main objective to your training.If muscle mass is what you desire and you have been doing this then you shouldn’t be surprised that you are no longer achieving results like when you first started out.
The Periodise Plan
The only, and I mean ONLY way to guarantee continuous improvements to your physique is to periodise your training program. So why is this thing ‘periodisation’ so important?
Without it you will either:
Push yourself hard enough to progress
you will push beyond your capacity without enough time to recover, which is the best way to achieve overtraining.. where your results either remain the same or fall away.
There is no one size fits all when it comes to periodisation. It all depends on your genetic blueprint, training experience, nutrition, sleep, hormones and a heap of other different factors individual to you. But these are some simple guidelines to implement that will ensure you maximise your potential by pushing yourself to your limits and then resting well enough in order to recover, and then pushing even harder again.
The importance of Volume
The total volume you lift each week is what matter most, especially in terms of hypertrophy. Weather that comes from heavy loads or
Putting it into Practice
Although studies have shown that it doesn’t mechanistically matter whether heavy or moderately-heavy weights are used for hypertrophy, from an application consideration it;s just impractical to train consistently with heavy loads due to the wear and tear/increased stress on the joints and the central nervous system. ThisIt’s repeated exposure to these heavy loads that will ultimately have a negative impact on your training, whether due to injury or suffering from over training. Studies have reinforced the best approach to hypertrophy or muscle building training is to vary between heavy and moderately heavy loads whilst re-emphasising the importance of periodising your training program to cycle in periods of deloading amongst periods of heavy lifting.
Change is as good as rest
At the end of the day, there is no secret “one size fits all” method, if there was such a thing we’d all be walking around looking like Arni. So you MUST be fluid and flexible with your approach. Play around with volume and frequency and learn to listen to your body, in order to know when to take you foot off the excelerator through a period of reloading to recharge your batteries so you can attack the next phase of your periodised training power with complete focus and strength.
Have a great day guys!
Matt
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